"The Idea of Order at Key West" is a poem written in 1934 by modernist poet Wallace Stevens.
Though the island was mostly isolated before the 1900s, its military post and the creation of a rail route to the mainland led to an increase in population and tourists.
Many literary artists such as Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost frequently visited Key West and drew inspiration from its environment; among them was Stevens, who met the two men on different occasions.
[2][3] As with many other poems of Stevens', "The Idea of Order at Key West" introduces dissonance between reality and perception.
Her singing left a strong impression on him: as he and friend turn towards the town, he sees the world differently.
Stated by critics as "perhaps impossible to interpret fully", the poem "affirms a transcendental poetic spirit yet cannot locate it".
Stevens stresses the "essential discontinuity between them" and emphasizes their differences by "demonstrating the vain struggle of the imagination 'to grasp what it beholds in a single version of it".
The narrator uses the woman's song to help himself reconstruct a world of his own reality from the chaos of the "water [that] never formed to mind or voice".