What is the controlling metaphor in “Of Modern Poetry” and why is it significant?

Question

Thank you.

Answer 1

Notice words like `stage,' `actor,' `audience,' and so on.  The central metaphor of the poem is the theatre, and it evokes, in a small way Shakespeare's `all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...'  (I think this is explicit because Stevens somewhat oddly separates `men' and `women,' lines 8-9.)  This evocation is important because the end of the middle stanza points back to the classical Greek musical drama, like Shakespeare brings together poetry and the metataphoric `stage.'  This works partly on a pun, because when the poet says, `the actor is/a metaphysician in the dark, twanging/an instrument, twanging a wiry string...' he is talking about the lyre, a musical instrument which in classical theory gives the origin to `lyric poetry,' of which this poem specifically is an example.

I hope this helps; but given this poem, I would be really inclined to say the poem controls the metaphor, not the other way round.