The cambridge companion to wallace stevens

t h e c a m b ri d ge co m p a n i o n t o w al l ac e s t ev e ns Wallace Stevens is a major American poet and a central figure in modernist studies and twentieth-century poetry This Companion introduces students to his work An international team of distinguished contributors presents a unified picture of Stevens’ poetic achievement The Introduction explains why Stevens is among the world’s great poets and offers specific guidance on how to read and appreciate his poetry A brief biographical sketch anchors Stevens in the real world and illuminates important personal and intellectual influences The essays following chart Stevens’ poetic career and his affinities with both earlier and contemporary writers, artists, and philosophers Other essays introduce students to the peculiarity and distinctiveness of Stevens’ voice and style They explain prominent themes in his work and explore the nuances of his aesthetic theory With a detailed chronology and a guide to further reading, this Companion provides all the information a student or scholar of Stevens will need j o h n n s e r i o is Professor of Humanities at Clarkson University, New York, and editor of the Wallace Stevens Journal THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO WALLACE STEVENS EDITED BY JOHN N SERIO cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521614825 © Cambridge University Press 2007 This publication is in copyright Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press First published 2007 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library isbn-13 978-0-521-84956-2 hardback isbn-10 0-521-84956-x hardback isbn-13 978-0-521-61482-5 paperback isbn-10 0-521-61482-1 paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate CONTENTS List of contributors Chronology List of abbreviations Introduction page vii x xvi JOHN N SERIO Wallace Stevens: a likeness JOAN RICHARDSON Stevens and Harmonium 23 ROBERT REHDER Stevens in the 1930s 37 ALAN FILREIS Stevens and the supreme fiction 48 M I LT O N J B AT E S Stevens’ late poetry 62 B J LEGGETT Stevens and his contemporaries 76 JAMES LONGENBACH Stevens and romanticism 87 JOSEPH CARROLL v CONTENTS Stevens and philosophy 103 BART EECKHOUT Stevens’ seasonal cycles 118 GEORGE S LENSING 10 Stevens and the lyric speaker 133 HELEN VENDLER 11 Stevens and linguistic structure 149 B E V E R LY M A E D E R 12 Stevens and painting 164 BONNIE COSTELLO 13 Stevens and the feminine 180 J A C Q U E L I N E VA U G H T B R O G A N 14 Stevens and belief 193 D AV I D R J A R R AWAY Guide to further reading Index vi 207 214 CONTRIBUTORS is the author of Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self (1985) and The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling (1996) He has edited the revised edition of Stevens’ Opus Posthumous (1989) and Sur Plusieurs Beaux Sujects: Wallace Stevens’ Commonplace Book (1989) He teaches at Marquette University MILT ON J BATES has published several books on twentieth-century poetry, including Stevens and Simile: A Theory of Language (1986), Part of the Climate: American Cubist Poetry (1991), Women Poets of the Americas (co-edited with Cordelia Cha´vez Candelaria, 1999), and The Violence Within/The Violence Without: Wallace Stevens and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Poetics (2003) She teaches at the University of Notre Dame JACQUELI NE VAUGHT BROGAN is the author of The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold (1982), Wallace Stevens’ Supreme Fiction: A New Romanticism (1987), Evolution and Literary Theory (1995), and Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature (2004) He has also published a contextualized, annotated edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (2003) He teaches at the University of Missouri-St Louis JOSEPH CARROLL is Professor of English at Boston University specializing in modern and contemporary poetry She is the author of Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions (1981), Elizabeth Bishop: Questions of Mastery (1991), and Shifting Ground: Reinventing Landscape in Modern American Poetry (2003) She is General Editor of The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore (1997) BONNI E COSTELLO is the author of Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing (2002) He has guest-edited two special issues of the Wallace Stevens Journal, one on ‘International Perspectives’ (2001) and the other, with Edward Ragg, on ‘Wallace Stevens and British Literature’ (2006) He teaches at the University of Antwerp in Belgium BART EECKHOUT vii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, and Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania His books include Wallace Stevens and the Actual World (1991), Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties and Literary Radicalism (1994), and a new edition of Ira Wolfert’s Tucker’s People (1997) He has just completed a new book, entitled The Fifties’ Thirties: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945–60 ALAN FILREI S DAVI D R JARRAWAY is Professor of American Literature at the University of Ottawa and is the author of Wallace Stevens and the Question of Belief: Metaphysician in the Dark (1993), Going the Distance: Dissident Subjectivity in Modernist American Literature (2003), and many essays on American literature and culture B J LEGGETT is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of Tennessee His books on Stevens include Wallace Stevens and Poetic Theory: Conceiving the Supreme Fiction (1987), Early Stevens: The Nietzschean Intertext (1992), and Late Stevens: The Final Fiction (2005) GEORGE S LENSING is Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill He is the author of Wallace Stevens: A Poet’s Growth (1986) and Wallace Stevens and the Seasons (2001) is the Joseph H Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester He is the author of three books of poems, including Fleet River (2003) and Draft of a Letter (2007), as well as five critical books, including Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things (1991) and The Resistance to Poetry (2004) JAMES LONGENBACH teaches at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland She is the author of Wallace Stevens’ Experimental Language: The Lion in the Lute (1999) BEVERLY MAEDER books include Wordsworth and the Beginnings of Modern Poetry (1981), The Poetry of Wallace Stevens (1988), Stevens, Williams, Crane and the Motive for Metaphor (2004), and he has edited A Narrative of the Life of Mrs Charlotte Charke (1999) He is the author of two books of poems: The Compromises Will Be Different (1995) and First Things When (2007) He holds the chair of English and American Literature at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland ROBERT REHDER ’ S is the author of Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923 (1986), Wallace Stevens: The Later Years, 1923–1955 (1988), and co-editor, with Frank Kermode, of the Library of America’s edition of Stevens’ Collected Poetry and Prose (1997) She has just published A Natural History of Pragmatism: The Fact of Feeling from Jonathan Edwards to Gertrude Stein (2006) She teaches at The Graduate Center, CUNY JOAN RICHARDSON viii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS has been editor of the Wallace Stevens Journal since 1983 He has published Wallace Stevens: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography (1994) and, with B J Leggett, Teaching Wallace Stevens: Practical Essays (1994) He has also edited Poetry for Young People: Wallace Stevens (2004) and created, with Greg Foster, an Online Concordance to Wallace Stevens’ Poetry (2004) He is Professor of Humanities at Clarkson University JOHN N SERIO is the A Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard She has written extensively on Stevens, including On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens’ Longer Poems (1969) and Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire (1984) Her recent books include Poets Thinking: Pope, Dickinson, Whitman, Yeats (2004) and Invisible Listeners: Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery (2005) She is at work on a study of Yeats’s lyric forms HELE N VE NDL ER ix D AV I D R J A R R AWAY the original site of metaphor’s – and dare we say, the question of belief’s – “unique and solitary home” (435) In emulation of this state of rhetorical approximation, Stevens leaves us in his final book the figure of George Santayana in “To an Old Philosopher in Rome,” a friend and mentor from Stevens’ Harvard years Close to death now in the poem, as Stevens himself was in real life, Santayana merits the highest praise because he stops upon the threshold of “as if,” rather than within the enclosed certainty of any metaphysical thought, the threshold, that is to say, between “The extreme of the known in the presence of the extreme / Of the unknown” (432) As a last gesture toward the Metaphysician in the Dark, therefore, Santayana is heroic in the autumn of his life because he continues to question that which eludes the ascertainable structures of faith His credences thus come to affirm a complicated and amassing harmony, imaged perhaps in the convent bells whose “peculiar chords” continue, in Stevens’ riddling phrase, “clinging to whisper still” (434) “[S]till” as both adjective and adverb in this final tribute becomes Stevens’ rather ingenious way of keeping open the question of belief at the edge of “wakefulness” (433) and our imaginative response to it as well 206 G U I D E T O F U RT H E R R E A D I N G W O R K S B Y WA L L A C E S T E V E N S The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens New York: Knopf, 1954 The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to Elsie, ed J Donald Blount Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006 The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination New York: Vintage, 1951 Opus Posthumous, ed Milton J Bates New York: Knopf, 1989 The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play, ed Holly Stevens New York: Knopf, 1971 Secretaries of the Moon: The Letters of Wallace Stevens and Jose´ Rodrı´guez Feo, ed Beverly Coyle and Alan Filreis Durham: Duke University Press, 1986 Selected Poems London: Faber and Faber, 1953 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Bates, Milton J Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 Brazeau, Peter Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered; An Oral Biography New York: Random House, 1983 Crockett, John “Of Holly and Wallace Stevens in a Purple Light.” Wallace Stevens Journal 21.1 (1997): 3–33 Filreis, Alan Wallace Stevens and the Actual World Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991 Gaddis, Eugene R “Poets of Life and the Imagination: Wallace Stevens and Chick Austin.” Wallace Stevens Journal 28.2 (2004): 261–78 Lensing, George S Wallace Stevens: A Poet’s Growth Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986 Lombardi, Thomas Francis Wallace Stevens and the Pennsylvania Keystone: The Influence of Origins on His Life and Poetry Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1996 Longenbach, James Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 207 GUIDE TO FURTHER READING Richardson, Joan Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923 New York: William Morrow, 1986 ——— Wallace Stevens: The Later Years, 1923–1955 New York: William Morrow, 1988 Sharpe, Tony Wallace Stevens: A Literary Life New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999 Stevens, Holly “Bits of Remembered Time.” Southern Review n.s (1971): 651–57 ——— Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens New York: Knopf, 1977 STEVENS AND HARMONIUM Blackmur, R P “Examples of Wallace Stevens.” 1931 Language as Gesture: Essays in Poetry New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952 221–49 Buttel, Robert Wallace Stevens, The Making of “Harmonium.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967 Litz, A Walton Introspective Voyager: The Poetic Development of Wallace Stevens New York: Oxford University Press, 1972 MacLeod, Glen Wallace Stevens and Company: The “Harmonium” Years, 1913–1923 Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983 Rehder, Robert The Poetry of Wallace Stevens New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988 STEVENS IN THE 1930s Burnshaw, Stanley “Stevens’ ‘Mr Burnshaw and the Statue.’” Stanley Burnshaw: The Collected Poems and Selected Prose Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002 348–57 Cleghorn, Angus J Wallace Stevens’ Poetics: The Neglected Rhetoric New York: Palgrave, 2000 Filreis, Alan Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties and Literary Radicalism New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994 ——— “Modern Poetry and Anticommunism.” A Concise Companion to TwentiethCentury American Poetry, ed Stephen Fredman Oxford: Blackwell, 2005 173–90 Monroe, Robert Emmett “Figuration and Society in ‘Owl’s Clover.’” Wallace Stevens Journal 13.2 (1989): 127–49 Nelson, Cary Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910–1945 Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989 Wald, Alan Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002 STEVENS AND THE SUPREME FICTION Bates, Milton J “Stevens’ Soldier Poems and Historical Possibility.” Wallace Stevens Journal 28.2 (2004): 203–209 Leggett, B J Wallace Stevens and Poetic Theory: Conceiving the Supreme Fiction Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987 Litz, A Walton “Space and Time in ‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.’” Wallace Stevens Journal 17.2 (1993): 162–67 208 GUIDE TO FURTHER READING Peterson, Margaret Wallace Stevens and the Idealist Tradition Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983 Ransom, James C “Teaching the Long Poem: The Example of ‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.’” Teaching Wallace Stevens: Practical Essays, ed John N Serio and B J Leggett Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994 74–83 Vendler, Helen “‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction’: Allegorical Personae.” Wallace Stevens Journal 17.2 (1993): 147–61 S T E V E N S ’ L AT E P O E T RY Baechler, Lea “Pre-Elegiac Affirmation in ‘To an Old Philosopher in Rome.’” Wallace Stevens Journal 14.2 (1990): 141–52 Bates, Jennifer “Stevens, Hegel, and the Palm at the End of the Mind.” Wallace Stevens Journal 23.2 (1999): 152–66 Berger, Charles Forms of Farewell: The Late Poetry of Wallace Stevens Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985 Harrison, Robert Pogue “‘Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself.’” New Literary History 30 (1999): 661–73 Leggett, B J Late Stevens: The Final Fiction Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005 McCann, Janet Wallace Stevens Revisited: “The Celestial Possible.” New York: Twayne, 1995 STEVENS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES Gelpi, Albert “Stevens and Williams: The Epistemology of Modernism.” Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism, ed Albert Gelpi Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 3–23 Kenner, Hugh A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers New York: Knopf, 1975 Lentricchia, Frank Modernist Quartet Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Perloff, Marjorie, “Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?” The Dance of the Intellect: Studies in the Poetry of the Pound Tradition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 1–32 Schulze, Robin G The Web of Friendship: Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995 Steinman, Lisa M “Lending No Part: Teaching Stevens with Williams.” Teaching Wallace Stevens: Practical Essays, ed John N Serio and B J Leggett Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994 169–78 Walker, David The Transparent Lyric: Reading and Meaning in the Poetry of Stevens and Williams Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984 STEVENS AND ROMANTICISM Abrams, M H “Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric.” From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Frederick A Pottle, ed Frederick W Hilles and Harold Bloom New York: Oxford University Press, 1965 209 GUIDE TO FURTHER READING Bloom, Harold Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977 Bornstein, George Transformations of Romanticism in Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 Carroll, Joseph Wallace Stevens’ Supreme Fiction: A New Romanticism Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987 Vendler, Helen “Stevens and Keats’s ‘To Autumn.’” Close Reading: The Reader, ed Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois Durham: Duke University Press, 2003 STEVENS AND PHILOSOPHY Bevis, William W Mind of Winter: Wallace Stevens, Meditation, and Literature Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989 Critchley, Simon Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens London: Routledge, 2005 Doggett, Frank Stevens’ Poetry of Thought Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966 Eeckhout, Bart Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002 Leggett, B J Early Stevens: The Nietzschean Intertext Durham: Duke University Press, 1992 Leonard, James S., and Christine E Wharton The Fluent Mundo: Wallace Stevens and the Structure of Reality Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988 Miller, J Hillis “Stevens’ Poetry of Being.” The Act of the Mind: Essays on the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, ed Roy Harvey Pearce and J Hillis Miller Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965 143–62 Poirier, Richard Poetry and Pragmatism Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992 STEVENS’ SEASONAL CYCLES Frye, Northrop Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957 Lensing, George S Wallace Stevens and the Seasons Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001 Macksey, Richard A “The Climates of Wallace Stevens.” The Act of the Mind: Essays on the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, ed Roy Harvey Pearce and J Hillis Miller Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965 185–223 Riddel, Joseph N The Clairvoyant Eye: The Poetry and Poetics of Wallace Stevens Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965; reprinted 1991 Sheehan, Donald “Wallace Stevens’ Theory of Metaphor.” Papers on Language and Literature 2.1 (1966): 57–66 S T E V E N S A N D T H E LY R I C S P E A K E R Beehler, Michael “Penelope’s Experience: Teaching the Ethical Lessons of Wallace Stevens.” Teaching Wallace Stevens: Practical Essays, ed John N Serio and B J Leggett Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994 267–79 210 GUIDE TO FURTHER READING Dolan, John “‘The Warmth I Had Forgotten’: Stevens’ Revision of ‘First Warmth’ and the Dramatization of the Interpersonal.” Wallace Stevens Journal 21.2 (1997): 162–74 Masel, Carolyn “‘Receding Shores That Never Touch with Inarticulate Pang’: Stevens and the Language of Touch.” Wallace Stevens Journal 26.1 (2002): 22–40 Vendler, Helen Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984; reprinted Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986 STEVENS AND LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE Borroff, Marie Language and the Poet: Verbal Artistry in Frost, Stevens, and Moore Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979 Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught Stevens and Simile: A Theory of Language Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986 Campbell, P Michael, and John Dolan “Teaching Stevens’s Poetry Through Rhetorical Structure.” Teaching Wallace Stevens: Practical Essays, ed John N Serio and B J Leggett Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994 119–28 Cook, Eleanor Poetry, Word-Play, and Word-War in Wallace Stevens Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988 Gilbert, Roger “Verbs of Mere Being: A Defense of Stevens’ Style.” Wallace Stevens Journal 28.2 (2004): 191–202 Justice, Donald “The Free-Verse Line in Stevens.” Platonic Scripts Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984 176–204 Maeder, Beverly Wallace Stevens’ Experimental Language: The Lion in the Lute New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999 Miller, J Hillis The Linguistic Moment: From Wordsworth to Stevens Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985 Rieke, Alison The Senses of Nonsense Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992 Vendler, Helen On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens’ Longer Poems Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969 S T E V E N S A N D PA I N T I N G Altieri, Charles Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry: The Contemporaneity of Modernism New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989 Costello, Bonnie “Effects of an Analogy: Wallace Stevens and Painting.” Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism, ed Albert Gelpi New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985 65–85 Feinstein, Sascha “Stanzas of Color: Wallace Stevens and Paul Klee.” Wallace Stevens Journal 16.1 (1992): 64–81 MacLeod, Glen Wallace Stevens and Modern Art: From the Armory Show to Abstract Expressionism New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993 ——— “The Influence of Wallace Stevens on Contemporary Artists.” Wallace Stevens Journal 20.2 (1996): 139–80 211 GUIDE TO FURTHER READING Qian, Zhaoming The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003 STEVENS AND THE FEMININE Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught The Violence Within/The Violence Without: Wallace Stevens and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Poetics Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003 Fisher, Barbara M Wallace Stevens: The Intensest Rendezvous Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990 Halliday, Mark Stevens and the Interpersonal Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991 Schaum, Melita, ed Wallace Stevens and the Feminine Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993 STEVENS AND BELIEF Jarraway, David R Wallace Stevens and the Question of Belief: Metaphysician in the Dark Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993 McCann, Janet “A Letter from Father Hanley on Stevens’ Conversion to Catholicism.” Wallace Stevens Journal 18.1 (1994): 3–5 Murphy, Charles M Wallace Stevens: A Spiritual Poet in a Secular Age Mahwah, N J.: Paulist Press, 1996 Scott, Nathan A., Jr The Poetics of Belief: Studies in Coleridge, Arnold, Pater, Santayana, Stevens, and Heidegger Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985 Taylor, Mark C Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 Zizek, Slavoj On Belief Thinking in Action Series New York: Routledge, 2001 R E F E R E N C E M AT E R I A L S Bates, Milton J “Stevens’ Books at the Huntington: An Annotated Checklist,” parts I and II Wallace Stevens Journal 2.3/4; 3.1/2 (1978; 1979): 45–61; 15–33, 70 Brazeau, Peter “Wallace Stevens at the University of Massachusetts: Checklist of an Archive.” Wallace Stevens Journal (1978): 50–54 Cook, Eleanor A Reader’s Guide to Wallace Stevens Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007 Doyle, Charles Wallace Stevens: The Critical Heritage The Critical Heritage Series Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985 Edelstein, J M Wallace Stevens: A Descriptive Bibliography Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973 Moynihan, Robert “Checklist: Second Purchase, Wallace Stevens Collection, Huntington Library.” Wallace Stevens Journal 20.1 (1996): 76–103 Serio, John N Wallace Stevens: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994 ——— Wallace Stevens Journal: The First Twenty-Five Years Potsdam, N.Y.: Wallace Stevens Society, 2002 Text-searchable CD-ROM 212 GUIDE TO FURTHER READING Serio, John N., and Greg Foster Online Concordance to Wallace Stevens’ Poetry http://www.wallacestevens.com/concordance/WSdb.cgi, 2004 Sukenick, Ronald Wallace Stevens: Musing the Obscure: Readings, An Interpretation and a Guide to the Collected Poetry New York: New York University Press, 1967 213 INDEX Abrams, M H 110 Mirror and the Lamp, The 110 abstract expressionism 165 abstraction 4, 5, 32, 46, 50–54, 65–69, 107, 140, 144, 178 agnosticism 120 Aiken, Conrad 36 approaches 2–6 Arensberg, Walter 16–17, 166 Aristotle 107, 155 Poetics 155 Arnold, Matthew 193 asceticism 120 Ashbery, John 76, 134 Auden, W H 169 Austin, A Everett (Chick) 166 avant-garde 16, 37, 149, 166 Bates, Milton J 74 Baudelaire, Charles 36, 153 Les Paradis artificiels 77 “L’Invitation au voyage” 36 belief, see religion Belitt, Ben 41 Bell, Graham 170 Benveniste, Emile 161 Bergson, Henri 107 Bishop, Elizabeth 76 Blackmur, Richard 36 Blake, William 87 Blanchot, Maurice 107 Bloom, Harold 62, 73, 113 Bodenheim, Maxwell 38 Bollingen Prize 1, 21, 62 Bombois, Camille 166 Botticelli, Sandro 126, 174 Brancusi, Constantin 16 Braque, Georges 16, 166 214 Brazeau, Peter 18, 121, 129, 130, 132 Browning, Robert 79 Burke, Kenneth 110 Burnet, John 12 Early Greek Philosophy 12 Burnshaw, Stanley 38–39, 43, 47 Butler, Judith 111 Bynner, Witter 12 Byron, Lord (George Gordon) 79, 87 Cazin, Jean Charles 165 Ce´zanne, Paul 16, 164, 170, 173, 176, 178 Church, Henry 20, 50, 95, 199 classicism 107, 164, 166, 172–73, 194, 200 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 51, 87, 110–11, 112, 156 Cornell, Joseph 166 Corot, Jean-Baptiste Camille 164, 165, 169 Crane, Hart 28, 31, 32 Bridge, The 31 Creeley, Robert 76 Critchley, Simon 115–16 Croce, Benedetto 107 cubism 165, 166, 168–69, 172, 175, 176 Cummings, E E 150 Dali, Salvador 172 Dante Alighieri 12, 19, 180 Darwin, Charles 11, 32 Autobiography of Charles Darwin, The 32 Derain, Andre´ 16 Derrida, Jacques 106, 162, 200 Descartes, Rene´ 49, 51, 80, 120, 122 Dickinson, Emily 133 Doolittle, Hilda see H D Dove, Arthur 166 Duchamp, Marcel 16, 17, 166, 169 Duncan, Isadora 180 INDEX East, influence of, 12, 168, 169 Einstein, Albert 4–6 Evolution of Physics, The Eliot, T S 1, 2, 4, 31, 32, 76, 79–80, 81, 83–84, 85, 103, 107, 149, 168 “La Figlia che Piange” 80 Four Quartets 31, 103, 195 “Waste Land, The” 31, 32, 81, 83, 84–85 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 6, 13, 19–20, 51, 59, 70, 87, 90, 95, 99, 100, 113, 114 Nature 13 “Society and Solitude” 100 “Transcendentalist, The” 95 Works 13 epicureanism 107, 165 epistemology 48, 62, 67, 89, 95, 109–10, 113, 116, 119, 151 faith, see religion Fantin-Latour, Henri 165 Faulkner, William fauvism 168 Fenollosa, Ernest 12 Florida 18 free verse 80, 81, 149, 150 Freud, Sigmund 17, 25 Interpretation of Dreams, The 17 Frost, Robert 1, 2, 18, 76, 114 Gage, Sybil 15 Giorgione (Giorgio da Castelfranco) 174 Gleizes, Albert 166 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 142 Gold Medal of the Poetry Society of America 62 Goodman, Russell 113 Gregory, Horace 42 Grey, Thomas 114 Hacking, Ian 19 Hals, Franz 169 Hanchak, John 21, 130 Hanchak, Peter Reed 21 H D (Hilda Doolittle) 79, 80–81 Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company 18, 19, 121 Hartford Courant hedonism 120, 135 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 111 Heidegger, Martin 112, 200 Heine, Heinrich 67 Lyrisches Intermezzo 67 Hemingway, Ernest 18, 181 Heraclitus 67, 107 Heringman, Bernard 10, 103 Hitler, Adolf 20 Hockney, David 171 Homer 19, 146 Howe, Susan 76, 77 Hughes, Langston 133 humanism 12, 171, 193 Husserl, Edmund 112 idealism 49, 51–53, 59, 95, 111, see also philosophy (Greek), Plato impressionism 164, 167–68 Infeld, Leopold 4–6 Evolution of Physics, The Israels, Jozef 165 James, Henry 105, 113, 168 James, William 11, 49, 76, 113 Pragmatism 113, 114 Jarrell, Randall 63, 76 Jowett, Benjamin 12 Joyce, James 25 Jung, Carl 182, 188 Kant, Immanuel 12, 49, 59, 110–11, 112 Keats, John 79, 87, 97, 98–99, 100, 133, 138, 156, 184, 185 “Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, The” 98 “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 169, 184 “Ode to a Nightingale” 100 “Ode to Melancholy” 97 “Sleep and Poetry” 98 “To Autumn” 138 Kenner, Hugh 76 Kermode, Frank 109 Keyser, Jay Klee, Paul 164 Kreymborg, Alfred 23 La Rochefoucauld, Franc¸ois 145 Leggett, B J 111 Lemercier, Euge`ne Emmanuel 57 Lettres d’un soldat 57 Leopardi, Giacomo 145 Pensieri 145 Life Linde, Ulf Lorrain, Claude 164, 169, 173 Lovejoy, Arthur 114 “Thirteen Pragmatisms, The” 114 Lowell, Robert 135 Loy, Mina 180 215 INDEX Manet, Edouard 168 Matisse, Henri 16, 168, 174 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 107 Merrill, James 76 metaphor 27, 30, 51, 55, 56, 57, 68, 69, 78, 79, 100, 151, 154, 155–59, 168, 173, 176, 177, 178, 194, 195, 196, 201, 202–3, 205–6 Millay, Edna St Vincent 38 Miller, J Hillis 112 Milton, John 19, 55, 186 modernism 2, 37–38, 39, 40, 44, 46, 47, 51, 85, 101, 108, 109, 132, 150, 166, 168, 169, 170, 173, 194, 200 Monroe, Harriet 23, 36, 37, 40 Moody, William Vaughn 37 Moore, Marianne 20, 28, 76, 79–80, 83, 85, 133 Observations 81, 83 “Reinforcements” 83 Motherwell, Robert 171 Muăller, Max 1213 Science of Thought, The 12 Mussolini, Benito 20 National Book Award 21–22, 62 New Masses 38, 39 New Yorker 1, 73 Nietzsche, Friedrich 52, 111–12 Norton, Charles Eliot 11 O’Hara, Frank 77 O’Keeffe, Georgia 166 Olson, Charles 76 Pascal, Blaise 145 Perloff, Marjorie 76, 77 Petrarch, Francesco 180 phenomenology 112 philosophy analytic 106 German 107, 110–12 Greek 12, 107–9 see also epicureanism, epistemology, idealism, phenomenology, Plato, pragmatism, skepticism, stoicism, transcendentalism Picabia, Francis 16 Picasso, Pablo 16, 47, 164, 170–72, 175 Plato 12, 49, 107–9, 193, see also idealism, philosophy (Greek) Dialogues 12 Poetry 37, 40, 47, 82 216 Poirier, Richard 114 postmodernism 194, 200, 201 post-romanticism 56, 89 post-structuralism 194, 197, 200 Pound, Ezra 1, 2, 31, 32, 76–78, 79–80, 81–82, 83, 85, 107, 149, 168, 169, 181 Cantos, The 31 “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly” 81, 83, 85 “In a Station of the Metro” 82 Pisan Cantos, The 77 “War Verse” 82, 83 Poussin, Nicolas 169, 173 Powell, Arthur 18 pragmatism 11, 49, 58, 60, 76, 107, 113–14 Pre´vost, Jean 24 prosody 50, 150 Pulitzer Prize 22, 62 Quinn, Sister M Bernetta 121 religion 9–10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 28–31, 32, 48–49, 52, 54, 59, 60–61, 69, 82, 88, 89, 90, 111, 118, 120, 135, 136, 155, 160, 164, 182, 184, 186, 193–206 Rodrı´guez Feo, Jose´ 20 romanticism 5, 34, 56, 87–101, 110, 111, 113, 129, 155, 156, 166, 169, 174, 194, 195, 200, 204 Rousseau, Henri 16 Royce, Josiah 11, 49, 104 Santayana, George 11, 16, 49, 52, 59, 73, 104, 105, 206 Interpretations of Poetry and Religion 49 Schelling, Friedrich 12, 13 Schlegel, Friedrich von 111 Schopenhauer, Arthur 12, 72, 111, 145 Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit 72 Shakespeare, William 19, 133 Sheeler, Charles 16, 166 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 87, 90, 99, 137 “To Night” 100 Simons, Hi 20, 196 skepticism 32, 74, 107 Socrates 107 solipsism 4, 5, 34, 177 Stein, Gertrude 17, 166 Three Lives 17 Stella, Joseph 16 Stevens, Elizabeth Stevens, Elsie Kachel 14–18, 21, 23, 125–26, 129, 131, 167, 182 Stevens, Garrett Barcalow, Jr 9, 10 INDEX Stevens, Garrett Barcalow, Sr 9–10, 129 Stevens, Holly 15, 18, 19, 21, 118, 125, 130–31, 132, 145, 193 Stevens, John Bergen 9, 10 Stevens, Margaretha Catharine 9–10, 130 Stevens, Mary Katharine Stevens, Wallace “Adagia” (prose) 4, 9, 24, 60, 103, 124, 131, 145, 157, 194 “Add This to Rhetoric” 153 “Adult Epigram” 203 “Anecdote of Canna” 27 “Anecdote of Men by the Thousand” 27 “Anecdote of the Jar” 27, 33, 156, 169 (discussed) “Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks” 27, 65 “Angel Surrounded by Paysans” 69, 178–79, 188–89 “Anglais Mort a` Florence” 195 “Another Weeping Woman” 183 “Apostrophe to Vincentine, The” 151–52, 174 “Arcades of Philadelphia the Past” 198 “Arrival at the Waldorf” 125 “Artificial Populations” 191 “Asides on the Oboe” 52, 157 “As You Leave the Room” 74–75 Auroras of Autumn, The 21, 62–63, 65, 66, 68, 83, 118, 178, 188, 204 “Auroras of Autumn, The” 25, 59, 60, 63–65, 67, 70, 71, 92, 100, 122, 143–44, 203–4 “Autumn” 12 “Autumn Refrain” 118 “Banal Sojourn” 27, 34, 131 “Bantams in Pine-Woods” 34, 136 (discussed), 182 “Bed of Old John Zeller, The” 9, 201 “Beginning, The” 68 “Botanist on Alp (No 1)” 173 “Bouquet, The” 68 “Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight” 68 “Carnet de Voyage” 82 “Cathedrals are not built along the sea” 11 “Celle Qui Fuˆt He´aulmiette” 69 “Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion” 145 “Child Asleep in Its Own Life, A” 74 “Chocorua to Its Neighbor” 58, 59, 94 “Clear Day and No Memories, A” 146 Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, The 21, 23, 48, 59, 62, 73, 110, 127, 155, 159, 189, 204 “Comedian as the Letter C, The” 25, 34–35, 83–85, 92, 95, 110, 144, 145, 150, 167, 183, 195 “Corte`ge for Rosenbloom” 195 “Countryman, The” 68 “Course of a Particular, The” 110, 123, 146 “Credences of Summer” 63–65, 66, 74, 94, 118, 119, 127–28, 131, 202, 203–4 “Crude Foyer” 94, 99, 157 “Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician, The” 38 “Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges” 27, 153 “Death of a Soldier, The” 120 “Description Without Place” 4, 94, 158, 202, 203 “Dezembrum” 150–51 “Dish of Peaches in Russia, A” 198 “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” 17 “Doctor of Geneva, The” 152 “Dolls” 125 “Domination of Black” 149 “Dove in the Belly, The” “Dutch Graves in Bucks County” 153 “Earthy Anecdote” 27, 152 “Effects of Analogy” (essay) 58, 66 “Emperor of Ice-Cream, The” 154, 182, 195 “Esthe´tique du Mal” 94, 119, 138 (discussed), 188 “Examination of the Hero in a Time of War” 58 “Explanation” 25 “Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas” 80, 108, 150 “Fabliau of Florida” 27 “Farewell to Florida” 183, 189 “Farewell Without a Guitar” 191 “Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet, The” (essay) 181, 186–88 “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” 25, 59–61, 70–71, 72, 100–1, 189–90 “First Warmth” 74 “Flyer’s Fall” 202 “For an Old Woman in a Wig” 182 “From the Journal of Crispin” 55 “From the Misery of Don Joost” 34 “Gigantomachia” 58 “Glass of Water, The” 198 “God Is Good It Is a Beautiful Night” 201–2 “Golden Woman in a Silver Mirror, A” 69 217 INDEX Stevens, Wallace (cont.) “Good Man, Bad Woman” 181, 182 Harmonium (1923) 16, 18–19, 23–36, 37–38, 63, 69, 81, 83, 91, 136, 146, 149–50, 152, 153, 154, 168, 194–96 Harmonium (1931) 36, 38, 82, 167 “Hermitage at the Center, The” 142–43, 205 “High-Toned Old Christian Woman, A” 25, 48–49, 90, 154, 155, 182, 189 “House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm, The” 131, 201 “How Now, O, Brightener .” 126 “Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion” 27, 30 “Idea of Order at Key West, The” 34, 150–51, 181, 184, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191, 195 Ideas of Order 18, 24, 38, 39, 64, 92, 93, 95, 97, 108, 194–96 “Imagination as Value” (essay) 58, 204 “In a Bad Time” 68 “In the Carolinas” 25 “In the Element of Antagonisms” 67 “Indian River” 27 “Infanta Marina” 149, 183 “Invective Against Swans” 26, 27 “Irish Cliffs of Moher, The” 205 “Irrational Element in Poetry, The” (essay) 24, 172 “Jouga” 137–38 “Landscape with Boat” 136, 177 “Large Red Man Reading” 65, 67, 144 “Last Looks at the Lilacs” 27, 182 “Latest Freed Man, The” 94, 161 “Lebensweisheitspielerei” 72 “Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit” 202 “Lettres d’un Soldat” 82 “Life Is Motion” 25, 27, 30, 152 “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery” 183 “Local Objects” 147 (discussed) “Long and Sluggish Lines” 71, 72 “Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly” 59, 70 “Lulu Gay” 182 “Lulu Morose” 182 “Lunar Paraphrase” 82 “Madame La Fleurie” 137, 181, 183, 191 “Man and Bottle” 198 “Man Carrying Thing” 25, 123, 135, 157 218 “Man on the Dump, The” 126, 198, 199 “Man with the Blue Guitar, The” 38, 44, 45–47, 67, 100, 122, 134, 142, 150, 160–61, 170–72, 196–98 Man with the Blue Guitar & Other Poems, The 38, 39, 43 “Materia Poetica” (prose) 172, 195 “Meditation Celestial & Terrestrial” 129 “Men That Are Falling, The” 41–43, 44 “Metaphor as Degeneration” 68 “Metropolitan Melancholy” 183 “Monocle de Mon Oncle, Le” 25, 80, 145, 153 “Montrachet-le-Jardin” 58, 94 “Motive for Metaphor, The” 157–58 “Mozart, 1935” 39–41, 44 “Mr Burnshaw and the Statue” 43 “Mrs Alfred Uruguay” 198 (discussed) “Mud Master” 126, 195 “mythology reflects its region, A” 13 Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination, The 63, 155 “New England Verses” 183 “No Possum, No Sop, No Taters” 123–24, 138–39 “Noble Rider and the Sound of Words, The” (essay) 50, 96, 190, 196 “Nomad Exquisite” 27, 30, 156, 195 “Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself” 71–72, 110, 127, 147, 158–59, 204 “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” 3, 4, 11, 20, 49–58, 59, 63, 64, 69, 77, 94, 96, 99, 108–9, 111, 128, 136–37, 144, 150, 187, 191, 199–201, 204 “Nuances of a Theme by Williams” 32, 77–78, 80 “O, Florida, Venereal Soil” 183 “Oak Leaves Are Hands” 198 “Of Mere Being” 74, 147–48 (discussed) “Of Modern Poetry” 20, 25, 101, 181, 186, 190, 194, 204 “Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds” 26 “Old Man Asleep, An” 72 “Old Woman and the Statue, The” 43 “On the Road Home” 94, 136, 199 Opus Posthumous 44, 74 “Ordinary Evening in New Haven, An” 4, 66–67, 68, 118, 145, 153 “Ordinary Women, The” 183 “Our Stars Come from Ireland” 205 INDEX “Owl in the Sarcophagus, The” 69, 92, 95–101 Owl’s Clover 38, 39, 80 “Owl’s Clover” 38, 39, 43–44 “Page from a Tale” 67 “Paisant Chronicle” 58 “Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage, The” 118, 126, 174, 183 Parts of a World 39, 62, 80, 87, 92, 95, 177, 197, 198–99, 204 “Pastor Caballero, The” 58 “Peter Quince at the Clavier” 17, 28, 30, 80, 174 “Phases” 82, 83, 84 “Plain Sense of Things, The” 71, 79, 121, 122, 140, 159, 204, 205 “Planet on the Table, The” 22, 73 “Plot Against the Giant, The” 25, 27 “Ploughing on Sunday” 152 “Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain, The” 159, 170, 205–6 “Poem Written at Morning” 173, 175 “Poems of Our Climate, The” 124, 159 “Prelude to Objects” 166 “Presence of an External Master of Knowledge” 74 “Primitive Like an Orb, A” 58–59, 66, 69, 91, 92, 204 “Puella Parvula” 65–66 “Pure Good of Theory, The” 154 “Quiet Normal Life, A” 72 “Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination” 74 “Red Fern, The” 127 “Red Loves Kit” 125 “Region November, The” 146 “Relations Between Poetry and Painting, The” (essay) 58, 164 (discussed), 193 “Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade, The” 38 “River of Rivers in Connecticut, The” 155–56 Rock, The 62, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72–74, 189, 204 “Rock, The” 70, 72, 73 “Role of the Idea in Poetry, The” 108 “Romance for a Demoiselle Lying in the Grass” 183 “Sail of Ulysses, The” 74 “Sailing After Lunch” 129, 195 “Saint John and the Back-Ache” 68 “Sea Surface Full of Clouds” 36, 128, 167 “Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man, The” 139 (discussed) “Shower” 167 “Six Significant Landscapes” 168 “Sketch of the Ultimate Politician” 58 “Snow Man, The” 1, 3, 6, 33–34, 80–81, 118, 123, 140–42, 161 “So-and-So Reclining on Her Couch” 174–75, 183 “Someone Puts a Pineapple Together” 158, 176–77, 203 “Statue at the World’s End, The” 43 “Study of Images I” 69 “Study of Images II” 69, 159 “Study of Two Pears” 170, 175–76 “Sun This March, The” 126 “Sunday Morning” 1, 6, 14, 17, 28–32, 42, 44, 53, 80, 88, 98, 120, 135–36, 150, 155, 168, 180, 183, 184–85, 190, 195 “Tea” 27 “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” 3, 34, 154 “Theory” 34 “Things of August” 204 “Thinking of a Relation Between the Images of Metaphors” 160 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” 27, 114, 145, 162, 168 “This Solitude of Cataracts” 67, 68 “Thought Revolved, A” 183 “To an Old Philosopher in Rome” 72–73, 105, 206 “To the One of Fictive Music” 25, 26, 180, 191 “Three Academic Pieces” (essay) 58, 66, 202 Transport to Summer 21, 63, 72, 92, 95, 118, 150, 188, 199, 201–3 “Two Figures in Dense Violet Night” 27 “Two or Three Ideas” (essay) 88, 120 “Ultimate Poem Is Abstract, The” 65 “United Dames of America” 183 “Vacancy in the Park” 123, 205 “Valley Candle” 34 “Variations on a Summer Day” 129 “Virgin Carrying a Lantern, The” 183 Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose 43, 74 “Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu” 97, 159 “Well Dressed Man with a Beard, The” 170 “Woman in Sunshine, The” 69, 129 219 INDEX Stevens, Wallace (cont.) “Woman That Had More Babies Than That, The” 183 “Woman Sings for a Soldier Come Home, A” 201 “World as Meditation, The” 70–71, 124–25, 127, 180, 181, 190 “World Without Peculiarity” 129–30, 191 “Worms at Heaven’s Gate, The” 26, 195 “Yellow Afternoon” 125 Stieglitz, Alfred 166 stoicism 107, 140 structuralism 195, 198 Sully-Prudhomme, Rene´ 134 surrealism 165, 168, 172 Sweeney, James Johnson 20 symbolism 77, 79, 101, 165 Tal-Coat, Pierre 164, 178–79 Tate, Allen 110 Taylor, Mark 197 Teasdale, Sara 38 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 79, 87, 96–98, 99 “Ancient Sage, The” 98, 99 “Demeter and Persephone” 96–97 In Memoriam 97 The´venaz, Pierre 112 transcendentalism 51, 59, 95, 113 Vale´ry, Paul 25 Van Vechten, Carl 17 Vendler, Helen 41, 158 Vidal, Paule 166, 178 Voltaire 32, 153 220 Wahl, Jean 20 Whitman, Walt 87, 99, 149 “Chanting the Square Deific” 99 Wilbur, Richard 104 Wilder, Thornton Williams, William Carlos 2, 17, 23–25, 26, 27, 32, 33, 76, 77, 78, 79–80, 81, 84, 149, 150, 168, 169 Al Que Quiere! 23 Collected Poems 1921–1931 27 “El Hombre” 32, 78 “Prologue to Kora in Hell” 23 Spring and All 83, 84 Wilson, Edmund 73 Winfrey, Oprah Winters, Yvor Wordsworth, William 28, 34, 87, 89, 90, 99, 128, 133, 156 Excursion, The 99 “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” 28, 34, 90 (discussed), 128 Lyrical Ballads 34 Wylie, Elinor 38 Yeats, William Butler 67, 68, 74, 77, 79, 169 “Circus Animals’ Desertion, The” 74 “Lake Isle of Innisfree, The” 67, 68 Young, Edward 34 Night Thoughts 34 Zeller, George 10 Zukofsky, Louis 77 ... York, and editor of the Wallace Stevens Journal THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO WALLACE STEVENS EDITED BY JOHN N SERIO cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,... CONTRIBUTORS is the author of Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self (1985) and The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling (1996) He has edited the revised edition of Stevens ... hand, then, is not to dismiss him for being too difficult, but rather to learn how to read him How should one approach Stevens poetry? As with any poet, the first step is to enjoy him, to take