The Song She Sang Poem Analysis

In the middle section of the poem, Stevens establishes the dominance of the artist; the woman is portrayed as the active and significant feature of the poem, while the sea is presented only as a location and becomes insignificant. Referring to the woman as the “maker of the song she sang” (15), it confirms her not only as the creator of art and the maker of her own version of reality, but also relates her to God, the maker of the world. With such a strong focus on the artist, the inspiration in the form of the sea becomes less significant, being portrayed as only the place where “she” exists while singing. The sea is again simply the sea; Stevens echoes the metaphor of the sea representing the natural reality. Although still being necessary

Through the inner world of her imagination, she is able to fulfill the external world of the sea, as it is viewed by the speaker: “She was the single artificer of the world” (37), the artist and the sole creator of the world “in which she sang.” Moreover, her song alters the way the speaker perceives the natural world around him. Here, Stevens is pointing out that reality is made complete by the influence of the human mind and imagination. Much like his notion of the poet in “The Noble Rider”, sharing his own perception of reality with his readers, the singer in the poem is able to distribute her view of the external world with the speaker, through the creation and sharing of the song. Her song, her art, is a projection of her version of reality, which is separate from the external reality the speaker views at the beginning. She is expressing the sea “word by word” (11), however, what she creates sounds nothing like the sea. When she sings, the natural world becomes a part of her own reality, losing its initial individuality of the