"Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores" 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 1921 and is therefore in the public domain.

Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores  I say now, Fernando, that on that day  The mind roamed as a moth roams,  Among the blooms beyond the open sand;  And that whatever noise the motion of the waves  Made on the seaweeds and the covered stones  Disturbed not even the most idle ear.  Then it was that that monstered moth  Which had lain folded against the blue  And the colored purple of the lazy sea,  And which had drowsed along the bony shores,  Shut to the blather that the water made,  Rose up besprent and sought the flaming red  Dabbled with yellow pollen --- red as red  As the flag above the old cafe---  And roamed there all the stupid afternoon

The subject of the poem is boredom of an afternoon and being saved
from it by focus on an experience of brilliant color. The poetry of
the subject upsets traditional expectations, especially in the first
and last lines. Stevens is experimenting with iconoclasm

Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...

. The informality and familiarity of "I say now,
Fernando" puts the reader off balance, and the last line provokes the
belle-lettrist who finds that in this poem Stevens "goes over to the Chinese". For such a critic the poem lacks an appropriately "lacquer
finish" and is "marred by the intrusion in the last line of the
critical adjective
'stupid'."http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/21/home/stevens-harmonium.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=login.

Wink
most when critics wince, one might say, paraphrasing from
"A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman

"A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium .Milton J. Bates interprets the poem as a "shocking version" of...

".