Woman Looking at a Vase of Flowers

Wallace Stevens’ poem “Woman Looking at a Vase of Flowers,” published in the Parts of a World collection (1942), is a profound description of the process of human perception and the rendering of order from chaos or disorder.  Through the conscious recognition of patterns that form the physical phenomena of the vase of flowers upon the piano, the figure of the woman, identified in the poem only through the use of feminine pronouns, perceives and forms the scene from the “large abstraction” (14)  [1]. This formation can be traced line by line within the poem so that the poem itself becomes the process of recognition of the natural patterns in the minds of the readers. Critic David Lavery  writes:               
Though the flowers are, by the poem’s close, ‘real,’ that is natural and ordinary—they were not always so, as the poem makes clear, nor in Stevens’ poetry are any of the things of our world: everything is seen in the way in which it is seen only because we learned to see it that way. [2]
The cognitive process of learning to see the patterns in the natural world can be recognized further in Stevens’ equating “himself with his world through an act of perception” and in his ability to reconcile the discord observed in nature within his poems. Edward Kessler also suggests that the poet recognizes in music “the creative power of mind over nature, or more precisely, of mind with nature.” [3] Without doubt, Stevens’ strategy in placing the vase of flowers upon the piano, in addition to his powerful opening lines, “It was as if thunder took form upon / the piano,” lends to the reader the opportunity to understand a little more thoroughly Stevens’ creative genius. He firmly believes in the power of art, in this case poetry and music, to serve as a means of giving shape to the natural world, and his great fascination with the clouds, the sea, and the wind perhaps indicates that order for him becomes more apparent in the deceptive chaos of the weather.
The wind dissolving into birds,                                                    
The clouds becoming braided girls.                      
It was like the sea poured out again
In east wind beating the shutters at night. [1] 
                                
==Notes==
1. Stevens in Kermode and Richardson 223-24.
2. Lavery.
3. Kessler 105.
==References==
Kessler, Edward.  Images of Wallace Stevens. 1972. New York: Gordian, 1983. Print.
Lavery, David. "'The More Than Rational Distortion' in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens." The Wallace Stevens Journal 8 (1983): 1-7. Web. 8 Feb. 2014.
Stevens, Wallace. "Woman Looking at a Vase of Flowers."  Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Ed. Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. 223-24.