Perkins is an associate professor atPrince George's Community College and has published widely in the field of twentieth-century American and British literature. In the following essay, she explores Stevens's poem as a celebration of the power of imagination.

In a letter written in November 1935, approximately one year after he wrote "The Idea of Order atKey West," Stevens comments on the role of poets:

We are not beginning to get out of the world what it will ultimately yield through poets. If poetry introduces order, and every competent poem introduces order, and if order means peace, even though that particular peace is an illusion, is it any less an illusion than a good many other things that everyone high and low now-a-days concedes to be no longer of any account? Isn't a freshening of life a thing of consequence? It would be a great thing to change the...