"The Public Square" is a poem from the second editionStevens, H. p. 260 (1931) of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1923,Buttel, p. 163 so it is one of the few poems in the collection that is not free of copyright, but it is quoted here in full as justified by fair use for scholarly commentary.
The violence of an edifice's demolition is matched by the violence of the poem's language, particularly in the first two stanzas. The slow-motion collapse is captured in the surreal atmosphere created by the third stanza. The final stanza etches a precise image of the square's clearing.
The harshness of the poem can be compared to the brutal encounter with Berserk in "Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks", with which it shares an architectural motif.
Buttel detects the influence of Cubism.Buttel, p. 163
Notes
References Robert Frost. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press. Stevens, H. Letters of Wallace Stevens. 1966: University of California Press