La Habana de Wallace Stevens

In 1945 Wallace Stevens sent José Rodríguez Feo a copy of his second book of poems, Ideas of Order , published ten years earlier. Thanking him for the gift, Rodríguez Feo praises one poem in particular, “Academic Discourse at Havana.” It is well known that Stevens’s poem, which had appeared in translation in Revista de Avance in 1929, has left its imprint on writers as different as Jorge Mañach and José Lezama Lima. Nonetheless, the interest in Stevens’s poem on the part of these and other Cuban writers arises from a misreading of the poem. The fact Stevens that places his poem “at Havana” does not mean that he speaks “about” Havana. The Cuban capital figures in the poem, but in a less pervasive way than has generally been thought. Its presence is limited to a few references whose function in the poem tends to undermine its connection to the city where Stevens spent a weekend. As regards its relation to Havana, “Academic Discourse” is, to borrow the title of another of Stevens’s poem, “Description without Place.”