The Emperor of Ice-Cream
12th of February - 2026
I had writing club today! A student group I go to in order to try and make friends.
Well, you’ll never guess who froze up and couldn’t volunteer to rant about the poem they spent ages picking and mentally prepping a discussion on! If I can’t talk verbally about a poem I like during writing club, I may as well do it here:
Poetry, to me, is about catching feelings that can’t be described in a simple adjective. It’s something beyond “weird” or “happy” but a secret, more specific thing, that takes the reader to a certain fragment of time.
Nothing embodies this more than Wallace Stevens’ ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’
The Emperor of Ice-Cream, by Wallace Stevens, 1954
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
The period of transition between death and a funeral is an odd one. The first stage of grief has gripped you with its cold fingers of denial, and one doesn’t have time to process anything, when there's so many un-answered questions.
The most recent funeral I went to was my grandfathers. I remember standing at the door, a line that started with my grandmother, went to my mother, and then to me. It was a generational line, of sorts, relatives recognising you less and less as they greeted you. I shook hands with people I’d never met, throwing myself into the role of host, so that reality wouldn’t set in, and I wouldn’t cry in front of strangers.
This poem embodies that liminal sense perfectly. The precipice of not quite being overwhelmed with grief, and still being swept up in its presence, nonetheless.
A very odd feeling. One that can’t be explained in just one adjective, and yet this poem describes perfectly in verse and meter.
Lets raise our cups to the Emperor of Ice-Cream!