Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ton—whooncereferredtoherselfandJamesas''wretchedexoticspro-
duced in a European glass-house''—was the idea that an article of popular
consumption could find its way into the playgrounds of the wealthy.
MorethantwentyyearsafterWhartonpennedherletter,poetWallace
Stevensa
rmedthattheless-than-noblebananawasunfitforeliteAnglo-
American society. In ''Floral Decoration for Bananas'' (1927), Stevens jux-
taposed the severe elegance of plums served in an exquisite dish with the
rawness of (export) bananas ''piled on planks'':
Youshouldhavehadplumstonight,
In an eighteenth-century dish,
And petifogging 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.
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Stevens refracted bananas through a primitivist lens in order to cre-
ate sensual images that both echoed nineteenth-century discourses about
tropical barbarism and anticipated later associations of bananas with
''hot'' tropical women, including Carmen Miranda and Miss Chiquita.
The poem may have been further inspired by African-American jazz
dancer Josephine Baker, whose early performances in Paris played to
European fascination with the ''primal'' sexual energy of dark-skinned
