Harmonium (poetry Collection) - of What Was IT The Proclamation?

Of What Was It The Proclamation?

For reasons that perplex critics Harmonium begins with Earthy Anecdote. This poem must be "some sort of manifesto," Helen Vendler speculates, "but of what was it the proclamation?"

Similar puzzles surround the second poem in Harmonium, "Invective Against Swans". Why would Stevens write an insult poem attacking swans? Why the aspic nipple in the third poem, "In the Carolinas"? What manner of nude "scuds the glitters" on a weed, as in "The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"? Who is the giant in "The Plot Against the Giant" and why can he be undone by heavenly labials? What is a "Gubbinal"? Why does the listener in "The Snow Man" become "nothing himself" and behold "the nothing that is"? Is "The Emperor of Ice Cream" simply a nonsense ditty or does it have some discursive meaning? Is Crispin's voyage in "The Comedian as the Letter C" a success or a failure? What is the mistake that caliper makes in "Last Looks at the Lilacs" when he scratches his buttocks and tells the divine ingenue that the bloom of lilacs is the fragrance of vegetal? Should the reader be amused or appalled by the remarkable funeral procession in "The Worms at Heaven's Gate"? And so on.