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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FLORAL DECORATIONS FOR BANANAS, by WALLACE STEVENS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do
Last Line: Their musky and tingling tongues.
Subject(s): Bananas
First Line: Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do
Last Line: Their musky and tingling tongues.
Subject(s): 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 sniff and noxious place.
Pile the bananas on planks.
The women will all be 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.
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