Floral Decorations for Bananas

rdf:langString Floral Decorations for Bananas

rdf:langString lightyellow

rdf:langString Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do. These insolent, linear peels And sullen, hurricane shapes Won't do with your eglantine. They require something serpentine. Blunt yellow in such a room! You should have had plums tonight, In an eighteenth-century dish, And pettifogging buds, For the women of primrose and purl Each one in her decent curl. Good God! What a precious light! But bananas hacked and hunched.... The table was set by an ogre, His eye on an outdoor gloom And a stiff and noxious place. Pile the bananas on planks. The women will be all shanks And bangles and slatted eyes. And deck the bananas in leaves Plucked from the Carib trees Fibrous and dangling down, Oozing cantankerous gum Out of their purple maws, Darting out of their purple craws Their musky and tingling tongues.

rdf:langString Floral Decorations for Bananas

rdf:langString "Floral Decorations for Bananas" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published Measure 26 (Apr. 1923) and is therefore under copyright, however it is quoted here as justified by fair use in order to facilitate scholarly commentary. The poem's speaker is unhappy about the choice of bananas as a table decoration, complaining that they don't match well with the eglantine and are suitable only for a room of women who are all shanks and bangles and slatted eyes. Recommended instead are plums in an eighteenth-century dish, centering a room in which there would be women of primrose and purl. Floral Decorations for Bananas Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do. These insolent, linear peels And sullen, hurricane shapes Won't do with your eglantine. They require something serpentine. Blunt yellow in such a room! You should have had plums tonight, In an eighteenth-century dish, And pettifogging buds, For the women of primrose and purl Each one in her decent curl. Good God! What a precious light! But bananas hacked and hunched.... The table was set by an ogre, His eye on an outdoor gloom And a stiff and noxious place. Pile the bananas on planks. The women will be all shanks And bangles and slatted eyes. And deck the bananas in leaves Plucked from the Carib trees Fibrous and dangling down, Oozing cantankerous gum Out of their purple maws, Darting out of their purple craws Their musky and tingling tongues.