"Colloquy with a Polish Aunt" 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 1919.

Colloquy with a Polish Aunt Elle savait toutes les légendes du Paradis et tous les contes de la Pologne. Revue des Deux Mondes  She  How is it that my saints from Voragaine,  In their embroidered slippers, touch your spleen?  He  Old pantaloons, duenna of the spring!  She  Imagination is the will of things....  Thus, on the basis of the common drudge,  You dream of women, swathed in indigo,  Holding their books toward the nearer stars,  To read, in secret, their burning secrecies....

Revue des deux mondes

Revue des deux mondes

The Revue des deux Mondes is a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine that has been published in Paris since 1829....

 (Journal of the Two Worlds) is a French language monthly literary and cultural affairs magazine that has been published in Paris since 1829. It was created in order to establish a cultural, economic and political bridge between France and the United States.http://www.revuedesdeuxmondes.fr/home/whoarewe.php#chrono The quotation says, "She knew all the legends of Paradise and all the stories about Poland." The phrase "from Voragine" seems to be a reference to Verazze.

Leading interpreters of Harmonium give Colloquy a wide
berth. Buttel omits it from his index catalog of the collection's
poems. Bates steers clear of it similarly. The poem is a contribution to one of Stevens's major themes, the relationship between imagination and reality. The poet's imaginative dream transforms the common drudge into women swathed in indigo, etc.