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
literature painting problem
To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.
belief fury poetry-is
The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing.
whales imagination brain
So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio--remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales--we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.
bears architecture janitor
A languid janitor bears His lantern through colonnades And the architecture swoons.
believe car pagan
behold The approach of him whom none believes, Whom all believe that all believe, A pagan in a varnished car.
may innocence
There may be always a time of innocence. There is never a place.
forests tails parakeets
Above the forest of the parakeets, A parakeet of parakeets prevails, A pip of life amid a mort of tails.
inspirational ignorance chiefs
One's ignorance is one's chief asset.
challenges crow gulls
One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls, When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops. He mocks the guinea, challenges The crow, inciting various modes. The sparrow requites one, without intent.
hero eye men
If the hero is not a person, the emblem Of him, even if Xenophon, seems To stand taller than a person stands, has A wider brow, large and less human Eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body Of a primitive.
art nature tennessee
I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.
land self sea
The sea Severs not only lands but also selves.
moon sea sun
It is the sun that shares our works. The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.
boys echoes water
Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.