The Emperor of Ice Cream - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • Composer Roger Reynolds wrote an avant garde, mixed-media dramatization of the poem for 8 vocal soloists, piano, percussion, and double bass in 1961-62.
  • In 1985, Composer Gary Kulesha published a revision of his clarinet quartet named after the poem.
  • "Misha Chellam of the acoustic pop group Speechwriters LLC wrote a song entitled "The Emperor of Ice Cream" while in his high school folk-pop group "Sid and Me".
  • Ken Nordine, beat poet and innovator of a stylistic form known as "word jazz," recorded a rendition of Stevens's poem to the backing of eerily bubbly circus music on his 1994 album "Upper Limbo."
  • Alternative rock group They Might Be Giants used the phrase "finale of seem" in their 1988 song, Pencil Rain.
  • Stephen King made several allusions to this poem in his novels Salem's Lot and Insomnia and his collection of short stories Just After Sunset in the short story "Harvey's Dream", as well as his television miniseries, Kingdom Hospital.
  • The poem was quoted in the film Pathology.
  • Dean Koontz referenced this poem in his book The Good Guy.
  • A soap made by the cosmetics company Lush is named 'The Emperor of Icecream' after this poem.
  • The song The King of Cream by The Love Kills Theory is an homage to this poem.
  • The 1965 novel The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Brian Moore is an Irish coming-of-age novel.
  • An Irish band called itself Emperor of Ice Cream, and released 2 EPs "Puerile" and "Skin Tight" in 1993.
  • The hero of Tom Perotta's Joe College reflects on the poem throughout the novel, wondering what the ice cream symbolizes.
  • The heroine of Laura Mcneal's National Book Award-nominated novel Dark Water reads the poem for a high school class and wonders about its meaning.
  • Spenser, the hero of Robert B. Parker's novel School Days quotes from the poem.
  • Author Alan Moore was a member in a band named "Emperors of Ice Cream" which recorded two songs "March of the Sinister Ducks" and "Old Gangsters Never Die".
  • Anthony Cappella published a novel "The Empress of Ice-Cream" in 2010.
  • Papa Spoogetti is known as "The Emperor of Ice Cream"

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