Palaz of Hoon, the

The Palaz of Hoon is the name of the building in “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon,” which appeared in Harmonium in 1923. A palaz is a palace, probably short for the Italian palazzo. The poem is Stevens’s meditation on what an afternoon tea would be like with someone such as Hoon.  According to Anthony Whiting, Hoon believes that “the world is both created by and an aspect of his ego” (64). Hoon seems to be a type of solipsist, generally someone who believes that only he and no other exists, but in this poem meaning someone who believes that all existence centers around his own will and self (and not necessarily that external objects do not exist). In this sense, Hoon’s “palaz” is not a real building at all.  The palaz is the entire world—the world as created from Hoon’s own will.
Needless to say, an afternoon tea with a solipsist might be considered an afternoon wasted.
==Stevens "Explains" Hoon==
In the Collected Letters, Stevens offers a thoroughly unhelpful explanation of Hoon:
You are right in saying that Hoon is Hoon although it could be that he is the son of old man Hoon. He sounds like a Dutchman. [Stevens’s family was partly Dutch.] I think the word is probably an automatic cipher for “the loneliest air”, that is to say, the expanse of sky and space. (871).