Modernist & 20Th Century Poets Codexery

Wallace Stevens

American modernist poet and insurance executive.

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Wallace Stevens

via Wikipedia: Wallace Stevens · see source

Wallace Stevens was born in 1879 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and his family belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church.[1][2] Stevens worked as a lawyer, and his first major publication—four poems from a sequence called "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry—appeared when he was 35.[3][4]

Life and work

After Harvard he worked as a journalist in New York City, then as a lawyer for several firms before joining Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in 1916.[5][3] He married Elsie Viola Kachel in 1909 over his parents' objections, and their daughter Holly was born in 1924.[6][7] From 1897 to 1900, Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree three-year special student, and during that time he served as the 1901 president of The Harvard Advocate.[8]

What the cited sources add

The Poetry Foundation notes that Stevens was sometimes considered a difficult poet due to the technical and thematic complexity of his work.[2] The Poetry Foundation states that Stevens wrote regularly for the Harvard Advocate by his sophomore year and received all of the school's honors for writing by the end of his third year.[2] According to the Poetry Foundation, Stevens involved himself in New York City's artistic community through association with poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams during a period when he apparently wrote no poetry.[2] The Poetry Foundation reports that Stevens resumed writing steadily in 1933, nine years after his daughter's birth.[2]

A letter from Father Arthur Hanley states that Stevens expressed a certain emptiness in his life during his first hospital stay and that Stevens and his wife had not been on speaking terms for several years.[9] In 1975, literary critic Harold Bloom described Stevens as "the best and most representative American poet of our time."[2]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Wallace Stevens" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Adelaide Kirby Morris. Wallace Stevens: Imagination and Faith. Princeton University Press. 1974. p. 12.; "Dutch Graves in Bucks County", wallacestevens.com (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. "Wallace Stevens", Poetry Foundation. facts only, no text reused. poetryfoundation.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Wallace Stevens" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Richardson, Joan. Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923, New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986, p. 276.; Richardson, The Early Years, supra, p. 424.; Richardson, The Early Years, supra, p. 445 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Wallace Stevens" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wallace Stevens (search results), Poetry Magazine . (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Wallace Stevens" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: George Santayana. Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. Introduction by Joel Porte, MIT Press, p. xxix. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Wallace Stevens" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: The Contemplated Spouse: The Letters of Wallace Stevens to Elsie Kachel, edited by J. Donald Blount (The University of South Carolina Press, 2006) (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Wallace Stevens" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Vendler, "The Plain Sense of Things", The New York Times, August 23, 2009 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Wallace Stevens" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens. "Stevens and the Supreme Fiction", by Milton Bates, p. 49. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. "Wallace Stevens's alleged deathbed conversion", Writing.upenn.edu. facts only, no text reused. writing.upenn.edu

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Wallace Stevens (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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