There is in Stevens` poetry an alternation between reality and the imagination which seems to result from `absence of definition` of poetry. With its ultimate meaning blurred, Stevens` poetry invites poststructuralist approaches. From such a critical position language cannot be thought of as having a center of meaning or `transcendental signified`. Rather, it can only be thought of as having differences that presumably represent the center. Stevens` endless elaborations of metaphor often prove that he intends to present no definite meaning. For Stevens God as ultimate source of meaning is surely dead but he instead finds another source in man. The poet is virile because he is at the center of his world and invents it. The invented world has the same structure as that of poetry. In this fictive world reality is extended by analogies and not void of imagination. Reality is create or revealed by life in which man and the world intermingles with each other. In this way the authority of meaning does not disappear but just shifts from God to man. Meaning is not given from any transcendental authority. It is created by life which man is part of. In spite of absence of definition Stevens recognizes poetry without difficulty and thus proposes `a center of poetry`. Stevens` center of poetry depends on his sense of `primordial reality` which is `uncreated` and thus ` untranslatable into human speech`. The poet knows that although he cannot define the center it surely exists and provides a position `to which all the variations of definition are peripheral`. The function of this center is to prepare for a `collective interpretation of the world` which mates one life to another. The function is fulfilled when people have lived in a region long enough to share a common way of life. Stevens` supreme fiction is another word for this sort of culture. Stevens` center of poetry is this center of life. Stevens is not an exemplary poststructuralist in that he sustains his sense of the center based on reality, although his language shows typical aspects of decreation and endlessly defers revealing any ultimate meaning.