Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) was an American Modernist poet whose work was dominated by the theme of how the mind conceives its own world. Considered one of 20th century’s greatest poetic masters, he won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize Collected Poems (1954.)
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and educated at Harvard and New York Law School, Stevens spent most of his life working as a lawyer at an insurance firm. He wrote poetry in private and in isolation from the literary community, developing a unique and colorful style. His ground-breaking poetry is rich in metaphors and original vocabulary as he reflects upon the nature of reality and imagination—how things truly are and what we perceive them to be.
Some of Stevens’s best-known poems include “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.”
Stevens’s notable works include Harmonium (1923,) Ideas of Order (1935,) Notes towards a Supreme Fiction (1942,) and a volume of essays The Necessary Angel (1951.)
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The bread of life is better than any souffle.
—Wallace Stevens
How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.
—Wallace Stevens
Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Thoughts, Thought
What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one’s meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Reality
Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Authors & Writing, Fiction
Poetry has to be something more than a conception of the mind. It has to be a revelation of nature. Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Perception
Intolerance respecting other people’s religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people’s art.
—Wallace Stevens
Topics: Tolerance