140 CHARLOTTE WARD

 The palm stands on the edge of space.
 The wind moves slowly in the branches.
 The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down. (141)

 Charles Berger, Forms of Farewell: The Late Poetry of Wallace Stevens (Madison:
U of Wisconsin P, 1985), has identified the golden bird with the phoenix that
rises from its own ashes (185). For Ronald Sukenick, it is the ultimate example of
his thesis Wallace Stevens: Musing the Obscure (NY: New York UP, 1967) 204.
Once again, Rousseau's bird of paradise recurs.
 The finest critics of the twentieth century were attracted to Wallace
Stevens' poetry. Many phases of his visual aesthetics have been analyzed.
The most durable was a self-taught Neo-Primitive championed by Picasso,
who has been ignored: Henri Rousseau. The two had more in common than
Stevens himself realized. Stevens the Hartford insurance-adjuster based his
Caribbean dream on paintings in friends' homes and in art museums, specially
selected tropical fruits, visits to the edge of the Caribbean in Key West, one
cruise, French magazines and books, descriptions by his Cuban prot6g6 Jos6
Rodriquez Feo, and the acquisition of some small pictures. Henri Rousseau
"Le Douanier" never actually visited the Caribbean. Le Rive and other exotic
paintings got their concrete edges from standard reference works and the
botanical gardens of Paris. Once added together, all Stevens' references are
more than casual. They are the crucial structure for his art.
 Admittedly, Stevens was an outsider to the Caribbean, but he wanted very
much to be an insider, which is why he relied on Henri Rousseau and Jos6
Rodriquez Feo. His eccentric finesse with language and fertile imagination
uniquely situate him beyond the banality of superficial tourism. Moreover, he
has inspired others to explore more deeply, thereby facilitating an appreciation
of native voices and local representations of the Caribbean.