Wallace Stevens Popular Books
Wallace Stevens Biography & Facts
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955 for his Collected Poems. Stevens's first period of writing begins with the 1923 publication of Harmonium, followed by a slightly revised and amended second edition in 1930. His second period occurred in the 11 years immediately preceding the publication of his Transport to Summer, when Stevens had written three volumes of poems including Ideas of Order, The Man with the Blue Guitar, and Parts of a World, along with Transport to Summer. His third and final period began with the publication of The Auroras of Autumn in the early 1950s, followed by the release of his Collected Poems in 1954, a year before his death. His best-known poems include "The Auroras of Autumn", "Anecdote of the Jar", "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Sunday Morning", "The Snow Man", and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Life and career Birth and early life Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1879 into a Lutheran family of Dutch and German descent. John Zeller, his maternal great-grandfather, settled in the Susquehanna Valley in 1709 as a religious refugee. Education and marriage The son of a prosperous lawyer, Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree three-year special student from 1897 to 1900, where he served as the 1901 president of The Harvard Advocate. According to his biographer, Milton Bates, Stevens was personally introduced to the philosopher George Santayana while living in Boston and was strongly influenced by Santayana's book Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. Holly Stevens, his daughter, recalled her father's long dedication to Santayana when she posthumously reprinted her father's collected letters in 1977 for Knopf. In one of his early journals, Stevens gave an account of spending an evening with Santayana in early 1900 and sympathizing with Santayana about a poor review published at that time of Interpretations. After his Harvard years, Stevens moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating with a law degree in 1903, following the example of his two other brothers with law degrees. On a trip back to Reading in 1904, Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel (1886–1963, also known as Elsie Moll), a young woman who had worked as a saleswoman, milliner, and stenographer. After a long courtship, he married her in 1909 over the objections of his parents, who considered her poorly educated and lower-class. As The New York Times reported in 2009, "Nobody from his family attended the wedding, and Stevens never again visited or spoke to his parents during his father's lifetime." A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She was baptized Episcopalian and later posthumously edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems. In 1913, the Stevenses rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie. Her striking profile may have been used on Weinman's 1916–1945 Mercury dime and the Walking Liberty Half Dollar. In later years, Elsie Stevens began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness and the marriage suffered as a result, but the couple remained married. In his biography of Stevens, Paul Mariani relates that the couple was largely estranged, separated by nearly a full decade in age, though living in the same home by the mid-1930s. Mariani writes: "there were signs of domestic fracture to consider. From the beginning, Stevens, who had not shared a bedroom with his wife for years now, moved into the master bedroom with its attached study on the second floor." Career After working in several New York law firms between 1904 and 1907, Stevens was hired in January 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become vice president of the New York office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was made redundant after a merger in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and moved to Hartford, where he remained for the rest of his life. Stevens's career as a businessman-lawyer by day and a poet during his leisure time has received significant attention, as summarized in Thomas Grey's book dealing with his insurance executive career. Grey has summarized parts of the responsibilities of Stevens's day-to-day life that involved the evaluation of surety insurance claims as follows: "If Stevens rejected a claim and the company was sued, he would hire a local lawyer to defend the case in the place where it would be tried. Stevens would instruct the outside lawyer through a letter reviewing the facts of the case and setting out the company's substantive legal position; he would then step out of the case, delegating all decisions on procedure and litigation strategy." In 1917 Stevens and his wife moved to 210 Farmington Avenue, where they remained for the next seven years and where he completed his first book of poems, Harmonium. From 1924 to 1932 he resided at 735 Farmington Avenue. In 1932 he purchased a 1920s Colonial at 118 Westerly Terrace, where he resided for the remainder of his life. According to Mariani, Stevens was financially independent as an insurance executive by the mid-1930s, earning "$20,000 a year, equivalent to about $350,000 today [2016]. And this at a time (during The Great Depression) when many Americans were out of work, searching through trash cans for food." By 1934, Stevens had been named vice president of the company. After he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard but declined since it would have required him to give up his job at The Hartford. Throughout his life, Stevens was politically conservative. The critic William York Tindall described him as a Republican in the mold of Robert A. Taft. Travel Stevens made numerous visits to Key West, Florida, between 1922 and 1940, usually staying at the Casa Marina hotel on the Atlantic Ocean. He first visited in January 1922, while on a business trip. "The place is a paradise," he wrote to Elsie, "midsummer weather, the sky brilliantly clear and intensely blue, the sea blue and green beyond what you have ever seen." Key West's influence on Stevens's poetry is evident in many of the poems published in his first two collections, Harmonium and Ideas of Order. In February 1935, Stevens encountered the poet Robert Frost at the Casa Marina. The two men argued, and Frost reported that Stevens had been drunk and acted inappropriately. According to Mariani, Stevens often visited speakeasies during Prohibition with both lawyer friends and poetry acquaintances. The following year, Stevens was in an altercation with Ernest Hemingwa.... Discover the Wallace Stevens popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Wallace Stevens books.
Best Seller Wallace Stevens Books of 2024
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The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Wallace StevensAn essential book for all readers of poetry, and the definitive collection from the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet." Originally pu...
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Desperate Engagement
Marc LeepsonThe Battle of Monocacy, which took place on the blisteringly hot day of July 9, 1864, is one of the Civil War's most significant yet littleknown battles. What played out that day i...
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What Light Can Do
Robert HassUniversally lauded poet Robert Hass offers a stunning, wideranging collection of essays on art, imagination, and the natural worldwith accompanying photos throughout.What Light Can...
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Luminous Traversing
Jacek GutorowAs Wallace Stevens once wrote, «a poem should be part of one's sense of life». This book provides a record of readerly and critical explorations of the poems and life of the Americ...
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Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction
Edward RaggBy tracing the poet's interest in abstraction from Harmonium through to his later works, Edward Ragg presents a new, revisionist study of the work of Wallace Stevens. The book embr...
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Wallace Stevens and the Poetics of Modernist Autonomy
Gül Bilge HanWallace Stevens and the Poetics of Modernist Autonomy presents a rethinking of modernist claims to autonomy by focusing on the work of Wallace Stevens, one of the most renowned poe...
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Poetry Will Save Your Life
Jill BialoskyFrom a critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author and poet comes “a delightfully hybrid book: part anthology, part critical study, part autobiography” (Chicago Tribune)...
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Wallace Stevens, New York, and Modernism
Lisa Goldfarb & Bart EeckhoutThis unique essay collection considers the impact of New York on the life and works of Wallace Stevens. Stevens lived in New York from 1900 to 1916, working briefly as a journalist...
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Study Guide to an Introduction of Wallace Stevens
Intelligent EducationA comprehensive study guide offering indepth explanation, essay, and test prep for Wallace Stevens including a brief commentary on a number of Stevens' works, which explore his phi...
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The Dome and the Rock
James BairdOriginally published in 1968. In The Dome and the Rock: Structure in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, James Baird traces the process of Wallace Steven's Grand Poem and the total stru...
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The Necessary Angel
Wallace StevensIn this collection of essays, consummate poet Wallace Stevens reflects upon his art. His aim is not to produce a work of criticism or philosophy, or a mere discussio...
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Wallace Stevens in Context
Glen MacLeodThis book aims to provide an indepth introduction to the multifaceted life and times of Wallace Stevens, who is generally considered one of the great twentiethcentury American poet...
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The Poetic Music of Wallace Stevens
Bart Eeckhout & Lisa GoldfarbWallace Stevens’s musicality is so profound that scholars have only begun to grasp his ties to the art of music or the music of his own poetry. In this study, two longtime speciali...
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Wallace Stevens, Poetry, and France
Juliette Utard, Bart Eeckhout & Lisa GoldfarbWallace Stevens, Poetry, and France offers the first booklength study of the various effects–poetic or prosaic, serious or comic, strange or familiar–produced by the deployment of ...
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Wallace Stevens in Critiques. An Overview of Four Essays Written on Poetry and Thought of Wallace Stevens
Amir Hossein Yasini VistiThe present paper aims to reveal how the poetry and thought of Wallace Stevens are represented in the four essays written in this regard. The first essay by Milton J. Bates involve...
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Poetry and Poetics after Wallace Stevens
Bart Eeckhout & Lisa GoldfarbAs the figure of Wallace Stevens (18791955) becomes so entrenched in the Modernist canon that he serves as a major reference point for poets and critics alike, the time has come to...
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Wallace Stevens
Frank DoggettOriginally published in 1980. This book emphasizes the ideas that Wallace Stevens embeds in his poetry, providing the first study to provide an intellectual biography of Stevens. I...
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Wallace Stevens and Pre-Socratic Philosophy
Daniel TompsettThis book studies Wallace Stevens and preSocratic philosophy, showing how concepts that animate Stevens’ poetry parallel concepts and techniques found in the poetic works...
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The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy
John BrehmOver 125 poetic companions, from Basho to Billy Collins, Saigyo to Shakespeare.The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy received the Spirituality & Practice Book A...
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Wallace Stevens and the Realities of Poetic Language
Stefan HolanderThis study examines Wallace Stevens' ideas and practice of poetic language with a focus on the 1930s, an era in which Stevens persistently thematized a keenly felt pressure for the...
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Things Merely Are
Simon CritchleyThis book is an invitation to read poetry. Simon Critchley argues that poetry enlarges life with a range of observation, power of expression and attention to language that eclipses...
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Wallace Stevens and Martin Heidegger
Ian TanThis book is a unique contribution to scholarship of the poetics of Wallace Stevens, offering an analysis of the entire oeuvre of Stevens’s poetry using the philosophical framework...
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Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens
Sara J. FordThis book traces the presence of the theater, both as an abstract concept and a literal space, in the plays and poetry of Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens as it attempts to expla...
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Wallace Stevens and Poetic Theory
B J LeggettLeggett traces the effect of several important theoretical works on the poetry and prose of Stevens during a period in which he was formulating an aesthetic between 1942 and 1954. ...
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Wallace Stevens, Poetry, and France
Bart EeckhoutWallace Stevens, Poetry, and France offers the first booklength study of the various effects–poetic or prosaic, serious or comic, strange or familiar–produced by the deployment of ...
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The Palm at the End of the Mind
Wallace Stevens & Holly StevensThis selection of works by Wallace Stevensthe man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet”was first published in 1967. Edited by the ...
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Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens & John N. SerioA beautiful new editionthe first in nearly twenty yearsof the work of Wallace Stevens, a founding father of contemporary American poetry, with a dazzling range of work that is at o...
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The Metaphysics of Sound in Wallace Stevens
Anca RosuWallace Stevens dedicated his poetry to challenging traditional notions about reality, truth, knowledge, and the role of language as a means of representation. Rosu demonstrates th...
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The Dharma of Poetry
John BrehmDiscover how to engage with poetry to support your spiritual practice, leading to more mindfulness, equanimity, and joy.In The Dharma of Poetry, John Brehm shows how poems can open...
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The Gaiety of Language
Frank LentricchiaThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voi...
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The Poetry Of Wallace Stevens
Wallace StevensWallace James Stevens was born on October 2nd, 1879 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer, sent Wallace to Harvard as a nondegree special student, after which he moved to ...
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The Whole Harmonium
Paul MarianiAn “incandescent….redefining biography of a major poet whose reputation continues to ascend” (Booklist, starred review)Wallace Stevens, perhaps the most important American poet of ...
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Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens - Summary and Analysis
Summary LifeAnalyzing literature can be hard we make it easy! This indepth study guide offers a comprehensive summary and thoughtful analysis of "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens. Get more ...
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Wallace Stevens And The Apocalyptic Mode
Malcolm WoodlandWallace Stevens and the Apocalyptic Mode focuses on Stevens’s doubled stance toward the apocalyptic past: his simultaneous use of and resistance to apocalyptic language, two contra...
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Notations Of The Wild
Gyorgyi VorosIn the summer of 1903, just before he turned twentyfour, Wallace Stevens joined a sixweek hunting expedition to the wilderness of British Columbia. The adventure profoundly influen...
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Wallace Stevens
Charles DoyleThis set comprises of 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by th...
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The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens
John N. SerioWallace Stevens is a major American poet and a central figure in modernist studies and twentiethcentury poetry. This Companion introduces students to his work. An international tea...
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Rockstar Detectives
Adam Hills'A delightfully funny book with a big, big heart' David O'DohertyThe debut novel from comedian and presenter of The Last Leg, Adam Hills, featuring a young detective dream team.Wh...
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The Daemon Knows
Harold BloomNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND KIRKUS REVIEWSHailed as “the indispensable critic” by The New York Review of Book...
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Secretaries of the Moon
Beverly Coyle & Alan FilreisThe letter from Jose Rodriguez Feo that prompted Stevens’s poem was the third in a tenyear correspondence (194454) between the poet and the young Cuban, who quickly became Stevens’...
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Poetry and Repetition
Krystyna MazurThis book examines the function of repetition in the work of Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery. All three poets extensively employ and comment upon the effects of rep...
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Romanticism and Religion from William Cowper to Wallace Stevens
Gavin Hopps & Jane StablerThe relationship between literature and religion is one of the most groundbreaking and challenging areas of Romantic studies. Covering the entire field of Romanticism from its eigh...