"The Idea of Order atKey West" is one of Stevens' better known poems and the most important poem in the collec tion Ideas of Order. Some critics think that this poem is one of Stevens' finest, and many cite it as among the best of his early poetry.

Early critics of the poem tended to praise what they considered a strong transforming imagination, reminiscent of the high romanticism of Keats, Wordsworth, and Shelley. One of Stevens' first major readers, Frank Kermode, in his book Wallace Stevens, claimed the poem "may stand as a great, perhaps belated, climax to a whole age of poetry that begins with Coleridge and Wordsworth; it celebrates the power of the mind over what they called 'a universe of death.'" Similarly, Lucy Beckett, in her book titled Wallace Stevens, argues that "the poem's marvelous conclusion, suggests in its triumphant but still...