"Bantams in Pine-Woods" is a poem from Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...

's first book of poetry, Harmonium

Harmonium (poetry collection)

Harmonium is a book of poetry by U.S. poet Wallace Stevens. His first book, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. He was in middle age at that time, forty-four years old. The collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred...

. It was first published in 1922 in the poetry journal Dial, along with five other poems, all under the title "Revue". It is in the public domain.

Bantams in Pine-Woods  Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan  Of tan with henna hackles, halt!  Damned universal cock, as if the sun  Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.  Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.  Your world is you. I am my world.  You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!  Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,  Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,  And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

This poem can be read as a little declaration of independence for American poetry. The new world's inchling poets are defiant towards the traditional literary canon, confident of their powers in the New World.
The poem can be compared to The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage

The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage

"The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in the 1919, so it is in the public domain...

" on Helen Vendler

Helen Vendler

Helen Hennessy Vendler is a leading American critic of poetry.-Life and career:Vendler has written books on Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, and Seamus Heaney. She has been a professor of English at Harvard University since 1984; between 1981 and 1984 she taught...

's interpretation of it as an expression of confidence in new American art. On this reading Chieftan Iffucan represents the canon, making a claim to universality and a privileged access to inspiration that is challenged by the Appalachia

Appalachia

Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...

n inchlings. The richness of tradition is conceded ("Fat!...."), but it is relativized ("Your world is you.").