
Wallace Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came at a fairly advanced age. His first major publication (four poems from a sequence entitled "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry Magazine) was written at the age of thirty-five, although as an undergraduate at Harvard, Stevens had written poetry and exchanged sonnets with George Santayana, with whom he was close through much of his life. Many of his canonical works were written well after he turned fifty. According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, who called Stevens the "best and most representative" American poet of the time, no Western writer since Sophocles has had such a late flowering of artistic genius. Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel; after a long courtship, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie. A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems. After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired on January 13, 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York Office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens is the definitive collection from the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet.” Originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens’s seventy-fifth birthday, the book was rushed into print for the occasion and contained scores of errors. These have now been corrected in one place for the first time by Stevens scholars John N. Serio and Christopher Beyers, based on original editions and manuscripts. The Collected Poems is the one volume that Stevens intended to contain all the poems he wished to preserve, presented in the way he wanted. An essential collection for all readers of poetry, it is an enduring monument to his dazzling achievement.
This selection of works by Wallace Stevens--the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet”--was first published in 1967. Edited by the poet's daughter Holly Stevens, it contains all the major long poems and sequences, and every shorter poem of lasting value in Stevens' career, including some not printed in his earlier Collected Works . Included also is a short play by Stevens, "Bowl, Cat and Broomstick."
Wallace Stevens' unique voice combined meditative speculation and what he called the "essential gaudiness of poetry" in a body of work of astonishing profusion and exuberance. Now, for the first time, the works of America's supreme poet of the imagination are collected in one authoritative volume.
Faber are pleased to announce the relaunch of the poetry list - starting in Spring 2001 and continuing, with publication dates each month, for the rest of the year. This will involve a new jacket design recalling the typographic virtues of the classic Faber poetry covers, connecting the backlist and the new titles within a single embracing cover solution. A major reissue program is scheduled, to include classic individual collections from each decade, some of which have long been unavailable: Wallace Stevens's Harmonium and Ezra Pound's Personae from the 1920s; W.H. Auden's Poems (1930); Robert Lowell's Life Studies from the 1950s; John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs and Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings from the 1960s; Ted Hughes's Gaudete and Seamus Heaney's Field Work from the 1970s; Michael Hofmann's Acrimony and Douglas Dunn's Elegies from the 1980s. Timed to celebrate publication of Seamus Heaney's new collection, Electric Light, the relaunch is intended to re-emphasize the predominance of Faber Poetry, and to celebrate a series which has played a shaping role in the history of modern poetry since its inception in the 1920s.
In 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 discussion of poetic technique. As he explains in his introduction, his ambition in these various pieces, published in different times and places, aimed higher than that, in the direction of disclosing "poetry itself, the naked poem, the imagination manifesting itself in its domination of words." Stevens proves himself as eloquent and scintillating in prose as in poetry, as he both analyzes and demonstrates the essential act of repossessing reality through the imagination.
The first new selection of this acclaimed poet’s work in nearly twenty years—now in paperback—is a rich reminder to poetry readers of his lasting contribution and his unending ability to puzzle, fascinate, and delight us.
An insurance company executive with a law degree, Wallace Stevens (1879–1951) lived an outwardly conventional life but composed highly original and exotic works of verse. One of America's most important twentieth-century poets, Stevens forever changed the landscape of modern poetry with his provocative, experimental style.This first-rate collection by the winner of the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for poetry invites students and other readers to enjoy the richness and variety found in 82 of Stevens's finest creations. Included are such well-known compositions as "Sunday Morning," "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock," "Anecdote of the Jar," "Peter Quince at the Clavier," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and the title piece — the author's favorite — as well as lesser known yet equally stimulating works such as "The Florist Wears Knee-Breeches" and "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad."Invaluable to students of American literature, this volume will be an indispensable treasury for lovers of modern poetry.
CRÍTICAS DE IMPRENSA "É um poema sobre a natureza da posia, com 'ficções' que são versões da realidade e quase uma realidade alternativa. Stevens escrevia num estilo impessoal mas assumidamente romântico que não distingue mundo e imaginação." Pedro Mexia, Diário de Notícias
When Opus Posthumous first appeared in 1957, it was an appropriate capstone to the career of one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. It included many poems missing from Stevens's Collected Poems, along with Stevens's characteristically inventive prose and pieces for the theater.Now Milton J. Bates, the author of the acclaimed Wallace A Mythology of Self, has edited and revised Opus Posthumous to correct the previous edition's errors and to incorporate material that has come to light since original publication. A third of the poems and essays in this edition are new to the volume. The resulting book is an invaluable literary document whose language and insights are fresh, startling, and eloquent.
Wallace Stevens did not publish his first book of poetry until the age of 44 and did not issue his second book, Ideas of Order, for over a decade. This rare signed limited edition of that crucial work features his illuminating meditation on art—“The Idea of Order at Key West”—along with 32 additional poems, each the sublime expression of a body of work praised by critics as “drenched with the life of his senses. This vibrant fact forms the core of his exploration of the interplay between the mind and reality… What gives his best work its astonishing power and vitality is the way in which a fixed point of view, maturing naturally, eventually takes in more than a constantly shifting point of view could get at” (New York Times). Awarded the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, “no poet gives us more to think about or greater reward for thinking” (Chiasson, New York Review of Books).
These Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover editions are popular for their compact size and reasonable price. Stevens contains a selection, chosen by Helen Vendler, of over sixty of Stevens's poems, revealing with renewed force his status as our supreme acrobat of the imagination.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird is a double accordian style book built into a clam shell box constructed with mahogany, black walnut, Japanese silk over boards with a bas relief copper sculpture forming the top cover of the box. The book unfolds from the center with six sheets moving to the left and seven sheets to the right and may be displayed closed, partially unfolded, or completely on a shelf or table. The images are printed from relief plates based on drawings by Corinne Jones made with black chalk over full color renderings in direct response to each of the poems. This book was printed on Rives BFK cover weight paper using 16 and 24 pt Lutetia types by hand on a Vandercook Universal III press and bound at the LaNana Creek Press, Nacogdoches, Texas.
The Auroras of Autumn is a 1950 book of poetry by Wallace Stevens. The book of poems contains the long poem of 10 cantos by Stevens of the same name. The book features a collection of poems containing also the 1948 Stevens long poem of the same name, whose title refers to the Aurora Borealis, or the "Northern Lights", in the fall. The book collects 32 Stevens poems written between 1947 and 1950, and was his last collection before his 1954 Collected Poems.The long poem in the book which is titled "The Auroras of Autumn" is a 240-line poem divided into ten cantos of 24 lines each. It is considered one of Stevens' more challenging and "difficult"[3] works, and a 20th-century example of the English Romantic tradition. According to critic Harold Bloom, it is Stevens' only major poem "in which he allows himself to enter in his proper person, as a kind of dramatic figure." On this reading, the poem comes to an early climax at the end of canto VI, where Stevens describes a tension between his own imagination and a disintegrative and elusive reality, his subject: This is nothing until in a single man contained, Nothing until this named thing nameless is And is destroyed. He opens the door of his house On flames. The scholar of one candle sees An Arctic effulgence flaring on the frame Of everything he is. And he feels afraid. Another notable poem in the book is The Owl in the Sarcophagus, an elegy for Stevens' best friend, Henry Church.It won the 1951 National Book Award for Poetry.
Long unavailable, now in paperback for the first time, these are the brilliant, subtle, illuminating letters of one of the great poets of the twentieth century. Stevens's famous criterion for poetry—"It should give pleasure"—informed his epistolary aesthetic as well; these letters stimulate one's appetite for poetry as they valorize the imagination and the senses. They also offer fascinating glimpses of Stevens as family man, insurance executive, connoisseur, and friend.FROM THE BOOK :"Next to the passion flower I love fuchsias, and no kidding. . . . Down among the Pennsylvania Germans there was a race of young men . . . who carved willow fans. These men would take a bit of willow stick about a foot long, peel it and with nothing more than a jackknife carve it into something that looked like a souvenir of Queen Anne's lingerie. The trouble that someone took to invent fuchsias makes me think of these willow fans. However it is a dark and dreary day today and who am I to be frivolous under such circumstances."—from a letter to Wilson Taylor, August 20, 1947
Harold Bloom afirmó que algunos de los mejores poemas del siglo se encuentran en este libro. La roca es el último poemario de Wallace Stevens, la obra donde se condensa toda la sabiduría del gran poeta norteamericano, quizá el mejor de su tiempo. Cada una de estas composiciones está escrita en las fronteras del silencio y bajo la sombra de la muerte. Son poemas austeros, sobrecogedores, imbuidos de una serenidad y un conocimiento casi póstumos. Y gracias a la minuciosa y espléndida versión de Daniel Aguirre, este libro, por primera vez traducido íntegramente, conserva en castellano la dicción y la música originales.
In Parts of a World, Wallace Stevens writing frequently adopts a solipsistic perspective in exemplifying and explicating his definition of poetry. Such poems as “Prelude to Objects,” “Add This to Rhetoric,” and “Of Modern Poetry” all address, to some extent, the self-referential nature of poetry. In “Of Modern Poetry” Stevens defined the genre as “the finding of a satisfaction, and may / Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman / Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.”
THE VOICE OF THE POETA remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliography, and commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of The Yale Review. "Hearing poetry spoken by the poet is always a unique illumination. This series opens our ears to some of the most passionate utterances and enthralling performances ever recorded."--Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize winner, Poetry"There has been a great need for a well-edited audio series for poetry, with high literary and technical quality. J. D. McClatchy has filled this need with great style."--Robert Pinsky
One of Wallace Stevens' most famous poems "Sunday Morning."Enjoy this fabulous poem Sunday Morning today!
The poem Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens.
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 for his Collected Poems in 1955."Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium, first published in 1915. The poem allows the reader to linger over the possibility of colors, strangeness and unusual dreams. Imagination that is absent from a mundane orderly life is represented by a dandified aesthete and an adventurous and exciting life by a drunken sailor dreaming of catching tigers in red weather. The poem's message is fairly simple. Stevens believed that poetry and literature in general had the ability to excite and inspire. He believed that the imagination was an overlooked tool with the innate capability of distinguishing a mundane life (i.e. the lives of those who wore 'white night gowns' to bed) from an exciting and fulfilling one. Essentially, he believed that the only limit on a person's life was a weak imagination.
La traducción de los aforismos completos de Wallace Stevens, uno de los mejores poetas norteamericanos del siglo XX. Insertado en la estirpe poética que nace en Mallarmé y Valéry, Wallace Stevens es, sin duda, uno de los grandes poetas norteamericanos del siglo XX. Ahora tenemos el privilegio de publicar una excelente versión de sus aforismos completos, que nunca antes se habían traducido íntegramenteal castellano. A través de estas páginas, en rigurosa edición bilingüe, podemos acceder a la esencia del pensamiento de Stevens, a su visión de la poesía y de la creación artística, a sus inteligentes consideraciones en torno a la música, la pintura, el tiempo, el dinero, el amor o la muerte. Stevens da vueltas a un mismo concepto, duda, observa su propio pensamiento desde distintos ángulos, recapacita y se contradice en un fascinante baile de la inteligencia en busca de la verdad y de la belleza. Excelentemente traducido y prologado por el poeta Daniel Aguirre, esta edición es una pequeña joya para todos los amantes de la literatura, un libro insólito por su rigor y su turbadora intensidad.
Ο ΟΥΩΛΛΑΣ ΣΤΗΒΕΝΣ (1879-1955) θεωρείται σήμερα από πολλούς ο κορυφαίος Αμερικανός ποιητής του 20 ου αιώνα και μια από τις σημαντικότερες ποιητικές φυσιογνωμίες διεθνώς.Περισσότερο από κάθε άλλο σύγχρονο ποιητή, ο Στήβενς έγραψε μια ποίηση που στοχάζεται πάνω στην ποίηση. Οι θεωρίες της γλώσσας και της λογοτεχνίας αποτελούν θέμα του έργου του, εξετάζονται και αναπτύσσονται εντός των κειμένων του, με πολύ μεγάλη συχνότητα και έκταση. Με ποιήματα όπως "Θεωρία", "Το έσχατο ποίημα είναι αφηρημένο", "Σχετικά με τη μοντέρνα ποίηση", "Η ποίηση είναι καταστροφική δύναμη", καθώς και με την εν γένει αυτοαναφορική, στοχαστική γραφή του, ο Στήβενς έγινε ο προάγγελος αυτού που, στη δεκαετία του '70 θα ονομαζόταν αποδομητική "στροφή", ή μετάβαση προς μια αμφισβήτηση των οντολογικών και επιστημονικών θεμελίων της φιλοσοφίας, της λογοτεχνικής θεωρίας και της κριτικής. Η εγκατάλειψη του Στήβενς στον καθαρό ήχο της γλώσσας πέρα από τη σημασία και πέρα από τη σύνταξη, η τάση του, δηλαδή να συμπεριλαμβάνει στο ποιητικό σώμα παραδοξολογήματα ή να διαρρηγνύει τους γραμματικούς τύπους, τον τοποθετεί στην πρώτη γραμμή της πρωτοπορίας και τον κάνει να συναντιέται με θεωρίες που ευνοούν την ερμηνευτική ευρύτητα, έτσι καθώς μιλούν για ένα νόημα που ολισθαίνει ανάμεσα σε λέξεις επιλεγμένες με κριτήριο τον ετυμολογικό πλούτο και τη μουσικότητά τους. Ο Στήβενς αναθέτει στον ήχο των λέξεων τον ρόλο να δημιουργήσει μια ισορροπία ανάμεσα στη φαντασία και την πραγματικότητα. Γράφει πως μόνο ο ποιητής μπορεί να βρει την τελειότητα που εγκατοικεί στον ήχο των λέξεων, ανακαλύπτοντας "όλη την αλήθεια που θα μπορέσουμε ποτέ να βιώσουμε". Η παρούσα επιλογή ποιημάτων σε δίγλωσση έκδοση και σε μετάφραση και εισαγωγή Χάρη Βλαβιανού, συγκεντρώνει πολλά από τα "στοχαστικά" ποιήματα του Στήβενς. Ο τόμος συμπληρώνεται με τα Adagia, μια σειρά αφορισμών, οι οποίοι, γραμμένοι μεταξύ 1930 και 1955, συμπυκνώνουν τις θέσεις του Στήβενς πάνω στην τέχνη και τη δημιουργία και αποτυπώνουν το ποιητικό του credo.H ποίηση του Στήβενς, που γεννήθηκε από την εμμονή του συγγραφέα "να δραπετεύσει από την πραγματικότητα μέσω μιας μεταφοράς" για να "οικοδομήσει ένα παρόν τελειούμενο μέσα στην ανίατη πενία της ζωής", αποτελεί ένα από τα σημαντικότερα επιτεύγματα της σύγχρονης λογοτεχνίας. (Από την παρουσίαση στο οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου)
Delightful harmony and boundless imagination: these characteristics make Wallace Stevens’ work very special, and perfect for children. Twenty-seven of his finest verses, evocatively illustrated, provide the perfect introduction to Stevens’ poetry. “From a Junk” reveals a boat at sea in the moonlight that “burns...and glistens, wide and wide, under the five-horned stars of night.” A little girl—“sweeter than the sound of the willow”—proudly dressed in her Sunday best accompanies the child-centered “Song.” From the farm landscape of “Ploughing on Sunday” to the three delicate dancing figures of “The Plot Against the Giant,” each picture and each poem will delight.John N. Serio is Professor of Humanities at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. He has published essays and books on Wallace Stevens and has served as editor of The Wallace Stevens Journal for over twenty years.Robert Gantt Steele has been an illustrator for 20 years. His commissions include several book covers, work for the Smithsonian magazine, and the poster image for the most recent Broadway revival of Showboat.
Wallace Stevens -escribe Andrés Sánchez Robayna- se abre a la sensibilidad contemporánea con la esencialidad que solicitamos a un poeta que, como él, fue heredero de las experiencias culminantes de la poesía moderna... De la simple existencia es un amplio recorrido por el conjunto de la obra de quien es considerado uno de los poetas más relevantes del siglo XX y una de las figuras más representativas del Modernism (es decir, de la modernidad literaria tal como se entiende en el ámbito anglosajón). En esta antología bilinge preparada por Sánchez Robayna recoge tanto algunos de sus poemas más conocidos -desde 'Mañana de domingo' hasta 'El emperador de los helados'- como aquellos otros poemas extensos en los que Stevens da completa libertad a la imaginación. El volumen se complementa con una amplia muestra de sus célebres aforismos (Adagia).Edición bilingüe.
by Wallace Stevens
Rating: 4.1 ⭐
Wallace Stevens achieved international recognition as a master craftsman and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awards. Trained as a lawyer and employed as an insurance executive, Stevens' reputation has flourished since his death, and he is now considered one of America's most significant poets. His poems, marked by an unmistakable individuality, are exquisitely formed, full of lush figures and daring images. The listener will enjoy how Stevens wittily confuses all the arts in a luxuriance he called 'the essential gaudiness of poetry.' Poems Included: Side 1: The Theory of Poetry (A Prose Note); The Idea of Order at Key West; Credences of Summer; The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain; Vacancy in the Park Side 2: Large Red Man Reading; This Solitude of Cataracts; In the Element of Antagonisms; Peulla Parvula; To An Old Philosopher in Rome; Two Illustrations That the World is What You Make of It 1: The Constant Disquisition of the Wind, II: The World is Larger in Summer; Prologues to What is Possible, II; Looking across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly; Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour and The Life of a Poet (A Prose Note)
Wallace James Stevens was born on October 2nd, 1879 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer, sent Wallace to Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and worked briefly as a journalist. From there he attended New York Law School and graduated in 1903. On a trip home to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel, a young woman who had worked as a saleswoman, milliner, and stenographer.After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired in as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. After a long 6 year courtship Wallace and Elsie married in 1909 over the objections of his parents, who considered her lower-class. For Wallace it was a seismic event; he never spoke to his parents again whilst his father was alive. No one from the family attended the wedding. By 1914 Wallace had become the vice-president of the New York office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and they moved to Hartford.In 1917 Wallace and Elsie moved to 210 Farmington Avenue where they remained for the next seven years and where he completed his first book of poems, Harmonium. Wallace was 38. His career was not prodigious in quantity but its quality was exceptional. From January 1922 onwards, initially for business, Wallace made several visits to Key West, Florida, where he stayed at a hotel on the Atlantic Ocean. "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."By 1932 they had purchased a 1920s Colonial at 118 Westerly Terrace in Hartford and there resided for the remainder of their lives. By 1934, Wallace had been named vice-president of the company. On March 28 1955 Stevens first went to see Dr. James Moher. The examination revealed nothing so Wallace underwent an x-ray and barium enema on April 1st. Neither showed anything. On April 19th he underwent a G.I. series that revealed diverticulitis, a gallstone, and a severely bloated stomach. Wallace was admitted to St. Francis Hospital and underwent an operation on April 26th. Wallace was suffering from stomach cancer. Released on May 11th he returned home to recuperate. On May 20th Wallace entered the Avery Convalescent Hospital. In early June he had recovered some strength and embarked on a series of journeys to receive honorary Doctorates ay Hartford and Yale.Wallace was readmitted on July 21st to St. Francis Hospital where his condition deteriorated. On August 1st he lapsed into a coma and died on August 2nd 1955 at the age of 75. He is buried in Hartford's Cedar Hill Cemetery. Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came at a fairly advanced age. His first major publication (four poems from a sequence entitled "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry Magazine) was written at age 35, although as an undergraduate at Harvard, Stevens had written poetry much of his greatest works were written well after he turned 50. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955. After his win he was offered a faculty position at Harvard but declined since it would have required him to give up his vice-presidency of The Hartford.