(A Not So) Gray Room

This is a gray room.

Okay...technically it's a dungeon. But to be fair, it is gray and it is a room. I don't know about you, but when I hear someone say "gray room", this is what I think of.

This is the poem, Gray Room by Wallace Stevens (with added visuals)

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,

And pick
At your pale white gown;

Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;

Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;

Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl-
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia

Besides you...

What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first line of this poem is pretty misleading. By having the protagonist sit in a gray room, you would expect this poem to be somber and have a sense of stillness. But almost immediately, the drab color of gray is evaded by a nice bright, silver. The poet uses verbs like "pick, lift, fall, gaze, move" to bring a wide range of movement into the poem. This helps the rhythm as it keeps the story in continuous motion. The pace starts off slow in the beginning, but by the end, something is beating furiously. Talk about action.

The color focus turns from gray, to silver, to white, to green, to green with red accents, to yellow. Though the color of the forsythia is not described, even if we do not know what a forsythia looks like, we can assume that it is a flower based on the "leaf" indicated in the text. Many people associate flowers with bright colors. As the poem progresses Stevens' canvas begins to burst with hues, growing brighter with each pen stroke.

What does all of this mean? The last two lines make it seem as if the narrator has an intimate connection with the woman. Could they be lovers? Is the white gown a wedding dress; is the wife-to-be getting nervous about her decision to spend her life with this man? Is she nervously picking at her dress and necklace and forsythia leaves because she's thinking about running away from a marriage? The man catches her contemplating these things in the end. "What is all this?" He asks, wondering why she is suddenly so apprehensive about moving forward with him. "I know how furiously your heart is beating." For him.

Another theory is that the narrator is looking into the mind of a woman who is depressed. She sees her world as dull and gray. She mindlessly interacts with all of the bright and beautiful things around her, yet she doesn't give them enough attention to appreciate them before trying to distract herself with something else a moment later. The narrator is trying to wake her from her apathy. "What is all this?" He dares to ask her. "I know how furiously your heart is beating." He says, trying to incite the passion within her.

Whelp, that's all I got. I was thinking about suggesting the white gown as being a white hospital gown- as in, she's in a mental institution...but that's just crazy!

Okay. Goodbye. Go away. Stop reading. Be gone.