Reading with a Wallace Stevens lens

I was reading Steven's Adagia this weekend and when I read them, I couldn't help connecting them to "Pale Fire"  -
                                         "I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line." ln 971-978

"A poem should be part of one's sense of life"
"It is not every day that the world arranges itself in a poem"

It's funny- when I think about my first reading of the poem, "Pale Fire," I only think of Kinbote/Botkin and the way he sees his "life" in the lines, because the commentary dominates the poem. Going through the poem and commentary again, I see how much Kinbote twists and imagines himself into the lines and it makes me think.
"Every poem is a poem within a poem: the poem of the idea within the poem of the words."

Stevens says that poetry/imagination has to have a basis in reality or it is mere fancy or fantasy.  Kinbote's tale appears to be the latter, but I think his perception takes in real life and shifts it into that image he wants to see.  Maybe.  It's difficult, because Shade took in events from his life and made his poem-- translating things into poetry.  Kinbote takes that poetry and creates a royal life for himself.  I suppose Shade has packed his life into a poem and Kinbote has unpacked the poem into a life.  Is it a cycle or a spiral? Or is reality lost in the shuffle? An added confusion- Nabokov is the poet, who created Shade's world, which seems real enough based on our reality, and the poem, which Kinbote applied to his life, a world also created by Nabokov, which seems to have no basis in reality beyond the reality in the poem.
Life imitates Art.

I'm not sure exactly how that relates to my thesis, but I think it's interesting.