Tehuanteptec

Tehuantepec is the name of a city, a gulf, and an isthmus in southern Mexico. The city is located in the state of Oaxaca and is known for its strong female population; the traditional dress of the Tehuantepec women was made popular by Frida Kahlo. The gulf of Tehuantepec is along the Tehuantepec coast on the Pacific Ocean. The isthmus is in the same area and is the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Before the opening of the Panama Canal, the isthmus, sometimes simply called the Tehuantepec route, was used as a major trade route.
==Significance to Stevens==
Stevens uses Tehuantepec as the backdrop for his poem "Sea Surface Full of Clouds"(1923); each stanza begins, "In that November off Tehuantepec." Stevens explains in a letter to Ronald Latimer that his trips to Mexico did not overlook Tehuantepec and that "all I know about the place is that one crosses the Bay or Gulf of Tehuantepec on the way to California, so that being 'off Tehuantepec' is not merely something that I have imagined" (288). Many Stevens scholars believe that his cruise in 1923 on the Kroonland inspired his writing of the poem, though Stevens went in October--not November. Some critics believe that he chose November to draw a further contrast between the hotness of Tehuantepec and the coldness of winter. Joan Richardson also mentions that it was probably on this cruise when Holly, Stevens's only child, was conceived. Though the poem has sensual themes, there are definite dichotomies drawn (as shown in the use of November in Tehuantepec), and some like Richardson and Ricki Lee Silverman believe "the poem's dissonant notes reflect Stevens's 'Puritan ... sense of sin,' but the tone of indolent pleasure suggests not so much a sense of sin as chagrin that the five senses have the power to thoroughly transfix"; though Tehuantepec was pleasant, it was also a place of conflict.
==Sources and Further Reading==
A. Walton Litz, Jonathan Holden, George S. Lensing, Joan Richardson, James Logenbach, and Ricki Lee Silverman's comments on "Sea Surface Full of Clouds," as compiled by Edward Brunner, John Timberman Newcomb, and Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois
City of Tehuantepec's Wikipedia pageIsthmus of Tehuantepec's Wikipedia page
Isthmus of Tehuantepec's Wikipedia page