“Hemingway is the example of the man who has no imagination.”
— Wallace Stevens (Casa Marina, 1935)

Oh! Blessed rage for order—pale Ramón!
Papa is a friend of Dionysus,
as are we—let us tip our hats to him,
as well our cups: to the Bull of Minos
on this isle of bones, who sloshes about
its shallow reefs! I give this humble toast
to dull his roar beyond our pink redoubt
which mists the trawlers idling on the coast
and drapes their empty decks with silver foam.
Let us conspire to lure him with a string
of hyacinths beside his water hole,
that stretch from our veranda to the sea.
I’ll don my mask, you tune your pithy lyre:
the Maenads fan their cocktails by the fire.

“By God, I wish I had that Hemingway here right now!
I’d knock him out with a single punch!”
— Wallace Stevens (Key West, 1935)

Rain all evening—satin rain upon the shore,
rain on lantern-glass, the loosened tie:
the palms keep time. Your daughter loosed my
boastful words to you, which opened like a door
to crosswinds, shaking now the sycamore,
hat brims folding, spectacles awry—
a seaman’s moon brimming in your salted eye,
and every puddle widened to a floor
of shining risk. We closed—not quite embrace,
not yet refusal—angling into mud
that took the crease from linen, name from face,
and made one sentence of our breath and blood.
You laughed, then hauled me up. Rain stitched the rove
of night back whole. I drank—and learned to love.