Dissillusionment at Ten O'Clock- Poetry Response 10

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

In continuing reading poems that fit my mood, I picked one where the first line said the word "haunted," for the sole reason that it is Halloween. The poem, however, is not about Halloween, or ghost haunting. This poem is about dreams. The way I interpreted it was that it was from a drunk sailor's view point. Tangent: Why in the world do sailors always have to be either crazy or drunk in all these readings?! Ok, sorry. Anyway... The poem is about dreams. It is about imagination. Dreams are the essence of imagination in the sense that only in dreams can people actually live what they could only imagine. Like catching tigers in red weather. WHAT??!!

I found it really interesting that Stevens said that people are not going to dream if baboons and periwinkles. Maybe because these things are to simple. Stevens also toys with the idea of color. How any color you can imagine will be alive in a dream. This poem is really really ghoul! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!