the Superhuman Sea Surface Full of Clouds The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade New England Verses Lunar Paraphrase Anatomy of Monotony The Public Square Sonatina to Hans Christian In the Clear Season of Grapes Two at Norfolk Indian River For reasons that perplex critics, Harmonium begins with "Earthy Anecdote". This poem must be "some sort of manifesto", Helen Vendler speculates, "but of what was it the proclamation?" Similar puzzles surround the second poem in Harmonium, "Invective Against Swans". Why would Stevens write an insult poem attacking swans? Why the aspic nipple in the third poem, "In the Carolinas"? What manner of nude "scuds the glitters" on a weed, as in "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"? Who is the giant in "The Plot Against the Giant" and why can he be undone by heavenly labials? What is a "Gubbinal"? Why does the listener in "The Snow Man" become "nothing himself" and behold "the nothing that is"? Is "The Emperor of Ice Cream" simply a nonsense ditty or does it have some discursive meaning? Is Crispin's voyage in "The Comedian as the Letter C" a success or a failure? What is the mistake that Caliper makes in "Last Looks at the Lilacs" when he scratches his buttocks and tells the divine ingenue that the bloom of lilacs is the fragrance of vegetal? Should the reader be amused or appalled by the remarkable funeral procession in "The Worms at Heaven's Gate"? The Collected Poems edition (1954) When Stevens republished Harmonium in 1954 as part of his Collected Poems, he used the 1931 edition as the basis. He did however make some changes. The final two poems of the 1923 edition were moved to the end of the book, so that they followed the 1931 additions. The poem titled "Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds" was, in this later edition retitled "On the Manner of Addressing Clouds" and the poem "Valley Candle" was added to the book between "The Jack-Rabbit" and "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand". Footnotes References Axelrod, Steven Gould, and Helen Deese. Critical Essays on Wallace Stevens. 1988: G. K. Hall & Co. Bates, Milton J. Wallace Stevens: a mythology of self. 1985: University of California Press. Bevis, William W. "The Arrangement of Harmonium". ELH Vol 37, No 3 (1970). Blessing, Richard Allen. Wallace Stevens' "Whole Harmonium". 1970: Syracuse University Press. Bloom, Harold. "Reduction to the First Idea". In