Infanta Marina is a poem in 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",...

' 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...

 about a seaside princess. Helen Vendler (in Words Chosen Out Of Desire) presents the poem as a "double scherzo" on 'her' in the possessive sense and on 'of' in its partitive and possessive sense.

Infanta Marina  Her terrace was the sand  And the palms and the twilight.  She made of the motions of her wrist  The grandiose gestures  Of her thought.  The rumpling of the plumes  Of this creature of the evening  Came to be sleights of sails  Over the sea.  And thus she roamed  In the roamings of her fan,  Partaking of the sea,  And of the evening,  As they flowed around  And uttered their subsiding sound.

of the motions

of her wrist

of her thought

of the plumes

of this creature

of this evening

of sails

of her fan

of the sea

of the evening

The litany of "of's" shows syntactically what the poem states semantically, Vendler proposes: the interpenetration of mind and nature, the denial of "significant difference" among the objects of the various of-clauses. This semantics may be read as a naturalistic denial of metaphysical dualism between mind and matter, a natural twin to the reading of "Invective Against Swans

Invective Against Swans

"Invective Against Swans" is a poem by Wallace Stevens from his first book of poetry, Harmonium .-Overview:The poem seems to be an insult poem slamming swans, of all things, calling them ganders and...

" as mocking the dualistic soul and its dubious journey to a realm that transcends nature.

The princess of the sea in this poem may be compared to "donna" who is "sequestered over the sea" in "O Florida, Venereal Soil

O Florida, Venereal Soil

O Florida, Venereal Soil is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in the journal Dial, volume 73, July 1922 and is therefore in the public domain....

", and to "Fabliau of Florida

Fabliau of Florida

"Fabliau of Florida" is a poem in Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.In a letter written in 1939, Stevens says that he has always likedthis poem, not because of its sense, "because it does not have a great...

", which in parallel fashion explores dissolution of boundaries in nature.