Florida

Stevens's first trip to Florida was in January of 1922, for business. He was intensely captivated by the beauty of Key West and wrote back to his wife, Elsie, back in Hartford, Connecticut, "This is one of the choicest places I've ever been to. The place is a paradise." Since then, Stevens found he could hardly keep himself away. He thought that the artistic lifestyle of those in New York and Paris was improper, and he instead sought refuge in Florida. Every year, he went to Florida and stayed in the Casina Marina Resort for his annual getaway.
There were, however, problems at Key West. Stevens often butted heads with other writers such as Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Jay Hopler, and others. He quarreled about their work, came to their homes unannounced, outrightly insulted them, and even became involved in physical brawls. Some believe that this behavior at Key West is a good representation of the struggle Stevens felt between his life as a business executive and his desire to be completely in the literary realm.
Weather was a common theme in Stevens's poetry, and the hurricanes that could easily ravage the otherwise calm and serene setting was a dichotomy that he enjoyed. The beaches also often became key figures in his poems. Stevens drew fascination from the vastness of the sea at the southernmost border of America and tried to encapsulate those feelings into words. As Stevens critic and scholar A. Walton Litz says, a component of Stevens's poetry is "the unique search for a Native American sublime ... one based on the local materials of the American landscape." Stevens especially dwelt on Florida--more specifically, Key West--for this sublime. Litz goes on to say that "The Idea of Order at Key West" is a quintessential Stevens poem: "In the poem, you have the classic situation of the poet addressing physical nature, singing girl walking by the sea, trying to understand the relationship between words and physical reality"--all through the sea of Key West.
thumb|center|670 px|Stevens reading "The Idea of Order at Key West"
==Poems about/mentioning Florida==
"Farewell to Florida"
"O Florida, Venereal Soil"
"Nomad Exquisite"
"Fabliau of Florida"
"The Idea of Order at Key West"
"The Comedian as the Letter C"
"Two Figures in Dense Violet Night"
"Indian River"
"Winter Bells"
"Primordia"
"From the Journal of Crispin"
"Annual Gaiety"
==Sources/Further Reading==
Wallace Stevens in Key West
Voices and Visions: Wallace Stevens (video)
Friday Night Fights: Contention from Wallace Stevens to Jay Hopler