National Poetry Month: To appreciate verse, You must hear and feel its rhythms. A Tribute to Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West"

Wallace Stevens 

In his review of Paul Mariani's recently published biography ("The Whole Harmonium" Simon and Schuster, 2016)  of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955),  New Yorker Magazine critic Peter Schjeldahl exudes awe and admiration for "The Idea of Order at Key West": 

"It may the finest American modern poem....(It gets my vote, with perfectly paced beauty that routinely squeezes tears from me.)"  

Schjledahl could not have said it better.

I dedicated my Columbia University  master's thesis on John Milton's Samson Agonistes with these concluding lines from the poem: 

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,

The maker's rage to order words of the sea,

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, 

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds. 

You must hear Stevens recite the poem in its entirety!!!