Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevenswas an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and he 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth2 October 1879
CountryUnited States of America
desire despair world
The greatest poverty is not to live In a physical world, to feel that one's desire Is too difficult to tell from despair.
sky despair cry
the windy sky Cries out a literate despair.
rain past snow
The figures of the past go cloaked. They walk in mist and rain and snow And go, go slowly, but they go.
past night lasts
What's down below is in the past Like last night's crickets, far below.
angel past heaven
And what's above is in the past As sure as all the angels are.
lying perfection delight
The imperfect is our paradise. Note that, in this bitterness, delight, Since the imperfect is so hot in us, Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
wind illusion irrational
The wind shifts like this: Like a human without illusions, Who still feels irrational things within her.
moon world dirt
This mangled, smutted semi-world hacked out Of dirt . . . It is not possible for the moon To blot this with its dove-winged blendings.
imagination
Imagination is the will of things. . . .
imagination tragedy satan
The death of Satan was a tragedy For the imagination.
nature years machines
The chrysanthemums' astringent fragrance comes Each year to disguise the clanking mechanism Of machine within machine within machine.
men thinking long
What is one man among so many men? What are so many men in such a world? Can one man think one thing and think it long? Can one man be one thing and be it long?
mother children voice
Already the new-born children interpret love In the voices of mothers.
revenge wind cry
The wind, Tempestuous clarion, with heavy cry, Came bluntly thundering, more terrible Than the revenge of music on bassoons.