The Load of Sugar-Cane by Wallace Stevens

The Load Of Sugar-Cane is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. In her review of Harmonium Marianne Moore picks out "The Load of Sugar-Cane" for praise because it achieves its splendor cumulatively. It illustrates an element of his craft, his "refraining for fear of impairing [a poem's] litheness of contour, from overelaborating felicities inherent in a subject." The red turban of the boatman in the final stanza is a little surprise, not what one would expect in the evidently Floridian everglades. Stevens is upsetting easy traditional expectations in this little experiment.