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 Critically
regarded as one of the most significant American poets of the 20th
century. Stevens largely ignored the literary world and did not
receive widespread recognition until the publication of his COLLECTED
POEMS (1954). In his work Stevens explores inside a profound philosophical
framework the dualism between concrete reality and the human imagination.
For most of his adult life, Stevens pursued contrasting careers
as an insurance executive and a poet. "The poem must resist the
intelligence / Almost successfully," Stevens wrote in 1949 in
'Man Carrying Thing.'
Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the son of Garrett
Barcalow Stevens, a prosperous country lawyer. His mother's family,
the Zellers, was of Dutch origin; she taught at school. Stevens
attended the Reading Boys' High School, and enrolled in 1893 at
Harvard College. During this period Stevens began to write for the
Harvand Advocate, Trend, and Harriet Monroe's magazine
Poetry. In his writing aspirations he was encouraged among
others by George Santayana. Stevens's first play, THREE TRAVELLERS
WATCH A SUNRISE, won that magazine's prize for verse drama in 1916.
It was produced in the following year at New York's Provincetown
Playhouse.
After leaving Harvard without a degree in 1900, Stevens worked
as a reporter for the New York Tribune. He then entered New
York Law School, graduated in 1903, and was admitted to the bar
next year.
Stevens worked as an attorney in several firms and in 1908 secured
a position with the American Bonding Company. He married Elsie Kachel
Moll, a shop girl, from his hometown; their daughter, Holly, was
born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters. The marriage
was unhappy but stable. Elsie's was fanatical in her housekeeping
and Stevens idealized and rejected her presence. Stevens did not
like visitors at home - he kept his distance from people but also
gained fame as a serious joker. On the other hand, Stevens spent
time with avant-garde writers and artist around his Harvard classmate
and art collector Walter Arensberg.
Influenced by imagism (see Ezra Pound) and French symbolism, Stevens
wrote 'Sunday Morning', his famous breakthrough work. It begins
with 'coffee and oranges in a sunny chair' but ends with images
of another reality, death, and universal chaos.
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries: "The tomb in Palestine,
Is not the porch of spirits lingering;
It is the grave of Jesus, where He lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
(from Sunday Morning)
 Stevens
published his first collection of verse, HARMONIUM (1923), at the
age of forty-four. Although it was well received by some reviewers,
such as Marianne Moore, it sold only 100 copies. "From one end of
the book to the other there is not an idea that can vitally affect
the mind, there is not a word that can arouse emotion. The volume
is a glittering edifice of icicles. Brilliant as the moon, the book
is equally dead," wrote Percy Hutchison in The New York Times
(August 9, 1931). Now the collection is regarded as one of the great
works of American poetry. Harmonium included 'The Emperor
of the Ice Cream', one of Stevens's own favourite poems, 'Le Monocle
de Mon Oncle', 'The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad', and 'Thirteen Ways
of Looking at a Blackbird'. The poems are partly autobiographical,
also referring to the failure of the author's marriage.' The Emperor
of Ice-Cream' is not what its title suggests, but concerns death
seen in harsh light - 'If her horny feet protrude, they come / To
show how cold she is, and dumb"- and respect in front of too-short
a life - "Bring flowers in last month's newspapers."
In the mid-1910s Stevens moved to Connecticut, where he worked
as a specialist in the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company.
In 1934 he was named a vice president of the company. IDEAS AND
ORDER, Stevens's next collection of poems, was published in 1935,
and received mixed critical acclaim, with accusations of indifference
to political and social tensions of the day from the Marxist journal
New Masses. However, according to Joan Richardson's biography
from 1988, Stevens was a closet socialist during the 1930's, but
did not make his views a public issue (see Wallace Stevens: The
Later Years, 1923-1955). In OWL'S CLOVER (1937) Stevens meditated
on art and politics, as a reaction to the critic of politically
committed critics. THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR AND OTHER POEMS
(1937) affirmed that Poetry / Exceeding music must take
place / Of empty heaven and its hymns.
From the early 1940s Stevens entered a period of creativity that
continued until his death in Hartford on August 2, in 1955. He gradually
turned away from a playful use of language to a more reflective,
though abstract style. Among his acclaimed poems are 'Notes toward
a Supreme Fiction', 'The Auroras of Autumn', 'An Ordinary Evening
in New Haven', and 'The Planet on the Table'. Echoing the ideas
of Baudelaire, Stevens argues in 'Esthétique du Mal' that beauty
is inextricably linked with evil. Stevens also wrote much about
writing poetry and in 'A Primitive Like an Orb' he stated: "We
do not prove the existence of the poem. / It is something
seen and known in lesser poems. / It is the huge, high harmony
that sounds / A little and a little, suddenly, / By
means of a separate sense."
 Before
gaining national fame as a poet Stevens enjoyed a high respect among
his colleagues. His life as a corporate lawyer did not impede his
creativity as a lyric poet. Perhaps he only knew better than many
others how abstract paragraphs and calculations have deep roots
in concrete human reality. In 1946 Stevens was elected to the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, in 1950 he received the Bollingen
Prize in Poetry, and in 1955 he was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize
and the National Book Award.
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
(from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird)
Selection for further reading: Wallace Stevens by Robert
Pack (1958); Wallace Stevens by F. Kermode (1960); Wallace Stevens:
The Making of Harmonium by Robert Buttel (1967); On Extended Wings
by H. Vendler (1969); Introspective Voyager by A. Litz (1972);
Wallace Stevens by L. Beckett (1974); Wallace Stevens: The Poems
of Our Climate by H. Bloom (1977); Wallace Stevens: The Making
of the Poem by F. Doggett (1980); The Modern Poetic Sequence by
M.L. Rosenthal and S.M. Gall (1983); Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen
out of Desire by H. Vendler (1984); Wallace Stevens, ed. by H.
Bloom (1985); Wallace Stevens by M.J. Bates (1985); Wallace Stevens'
Supreme Fiction by J. Carroll (1987); Critical Essays on Wallace
Stevens, ed. by S.G. Axelrod (1988); Wallace Stevens: The Later
Years by J. Richardson (1988); Wallace Stevens by J. Longenbach
(1991); The Wallace Stevens Case by Thomas C. Grey (1991); Early
Stevens by B.J. Leggett (1992); Wallace Stevens and the Feminine,
ed. by M. Scaum (1993); Wallace Stevens and the Question of Belief
by David R. Jarraway (1993); Teaching Wallace Stevens by J.N.
Serio and B.J. Leggett (1994); Wallace Stevens: An Annotated Secondary
Bibliography by John N. Serio (1994); The Metaphysics of Sound
in Wallace Stevens by Anca Rosu (1995); The Web of Friendship
by Robin G. Schulze (1995); Wallace Stevens Revisited by Janet
McCann (1995); The Never-Resting Mind by Anthony Whiting and Robin
G. Schulze (1996); Notations of the Wild by Gyorgyi Voros (1997);
Wallace Stevens by Tony Sharpe (1999)
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