Product Description

Wallace Stevens' unique voice combined meditative speculation and what he called the "essential gaudiness of poetry" in a body of work of astonishing profusion and exuberance. Now, for the first time, the works of America's supreme poet of the imagination are collected in one authoritative volume.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93338 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1030 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781883011451
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Born in Pennsylvania in 1879, Wallace Stevens spent his adult life working in the rigorously non-poetic insurance business. Yet his poetry, most of which he wrote after his 50th birthday, is anything but mundane. Rather, Stevens stuffed his work with the brilliant bric-a-brac of a dozen cultures, celebrating (for example) the "dark Brazilians in their cafes,/Musing immaculate, pampean dits" or the way "that old Chinese/Sat tittivating by their mountain pools/Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards." Stevens wasn't, however, a simple collector of souvenirs. A magpie with a mission, he used the peculiar music of his poetry to investigate grand philosophical dilemmas. What was the distinction between appearance and reality? Does an aesthetic artifact such as a poem bring us any closer to the real? (He seemed to answer the latter question, at least provisionally, by declaring that "the poem is the cry of its occasion/Part of the res itself and not about it.") The Collected Poetry & Prose brings together all of Stevens's published books, including such classic poems as "The Man with the Blue Guitar," "Sunday Morning," and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." There's also a generous sampling of his essays, speeches, letters, and miscellaneous prose. These riches confirm the enormous reach of Stevens's imagination, but they also remind us that for all his internationalism, he remained very much a product of his native soil. As he confessed in a 1948 letter, "I like to hold on to anything that seems to have a definite American past even though the American trees may be growing by the side of queer Parthenons set, say, in the neighborhood of Niagara Falls."

From Library Journal
This outstanding volume collects for the first time all of Stevens's published poetry, along with his writings about poetry plus reviews, criticism, speeches, short stories, and philosophical works. It also contains scholarly notes on the text plus an index to first lines and titles. Undoubtedly, the single finest collection of Stevens ever produced. Essential for all collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
I have become used to reading Stevens in his much-loved Collected Poems.... Like Leaves of Grass a century before, it contained only the poems and a picture of the poet. The editors of the new Library of America edition, Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson, produce a book that's half prose and twice as long. It will take me some time to get used to. The philosophical essays, in particular, are heavy going. But having all the poems--especially all the late poems--in one volume is a great thing.... -- The New York Times Book Review, Michael Hofmann

Now all of this material, including a great many uncollected and unpublished poems and a large number of prose writings and a sampling of journals and letters, newly edited from manuscripts, is gathered in one book. It is simply invaluable. The material for this authoritative volume was selected by Stevens' biographer, Joan Richardson, and Sir Frank Kermode, the distinguished scholar and critic (this reviewer is closely acquainted with both of them). The helpful apparatus includes elaborate textual information, a biographical chronology and occasional notes on the texts themselves. -- Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, John Hollander

Sonnet, Fr. The Book Of Regrets
Instant Clearness
Nature; Sonnet
(prose Statement On The Poetry Of War)
Academic Discourse At Havana
Add This To Rhetoric
Adult Epigram
Agenda
All Things Imagined Are Of Earth Compact
The American Sublime
Americana
Analysis Of A Theme
Anatomy Of Monotony
Anecdote Of Canna
Anecdote Of Men By The Thousand
Anecdote Of The Abnormal
Anecdote Of The Jar
Anecdote Of The Prince Of Peacocks
Anecdote Of The Prince Of Peacocks
Angel Surrounded By Paysans
Anglais Mort A Florence
Annual Gaiety
Another Weeping Woman
Anything Is Beautiful If You Say It Is
The Apostrophe To Vincentine
Arcades Of Philadelphia The Past
Arrival At The Waldorf
Artificial Populations
As At A Theatre
As You Leave The Room
Asides On The Oboe
Attempt To Discover Life
The Auroras Of Autumn
Autumn
Autumn Refrain
The Bagatelles The Madrigals
Ballade Of The Pink Parasol
Banal Sojourn
Banjo Boomer
Bantams In Pine-woods
The Bed Of Old John Zeller
The Beginning
The Bird With The Coppery, Keen Claws
Blanche Mccarthy
The Blue Buildings In The Summer Air
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 1
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 10. Song
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 11. After Music
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 12. Twilight
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 13. Adagio
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 14
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 15. Damask
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 16. Rest
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 17. In Town
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 18. Meditation
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 19. Home Again
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 2. New Life
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 20
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 3. Afield
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 4
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 5. In A Crowd
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 6. On The Ferry
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 7. Tides
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 8. Winter Melody
A Book Of Verses To E.v.m.: 9. Sonnet
Botanist On Alp (no. 1)
Botanist On Alp (no. 2)
The Bouquet
Bouquet Of Belle Scavoir
Bouquet Of Roses In Sunlight
Bowl
The Brave Man
Burghers Of Petty Death
The Candle A Saint
Carnet De Voyage
Celle Qui Fut Heaulmiette
Certain Phenomena Of Sound
Chaos In Motion And Not In Motion
Chiaroscuro
A Child Asleep In Its Own Life
Chocorua To Its Neighbor
A Clear Day And No Memories
Colloquy With A Polish Aunt
Colors
The Comedian As The Letter C: 1. The World Without Imagination
The Comedian As The Letter C: 2. Concerning Thunderstorms Of Yucatan
The Comedian As The Letter C: 3. Approaching Carolina
The Comedian As The Letter C: 4. The Idea Of A Colony
The Comedian As The Letter C: 5. A Nice Shady Home
The Comedian As The Letter C: 6. And Daughters With Curls
The Common Life
Communications Of Meaning
A Completely New Set Of Objects
Connoisseur Of Chaos
Continual Conversation With A Silent Man
Conversation With Three Women Of New England
Cortege For Rosenbloom
Country Words
The Countryman
The Course Of A Particular
The Creations Of Sound
Credences Of Summer
Crude Foyer
The Cuban Doctor
Cuisine Bourgoise
The Curtains In The House Of The Metaphysician
Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, Et Les Unze Mille...
Dance Of The Macabre Mice
The Death Of A Soldier
Debris Of Life And Mind
Delightful Evening
Depression Before Spring
Description Without Place
Desire & The Object
The Desire To Make Love In A Pagoda
Dezembrum
Dinner Bell In The Woods
A Discovery Of Thought
A Dish Of Peaches In Russia
Disillusionment Of Ten O'clock
The Doctor Of Geneva
Dolls
Domination Of Black
The Dove In Spring
The Dove In The Belly
The Drum Majors In The Labor Day Parade
Dry Loaf
Dutch Graves In Bucks County
The Dwarf
Earthy Anecdote
Elsie's Mirror Only Shows
The Emperor Of Ice-cream
Esthetique Du Mal
Evening Without Angels
Examination Of The Hero In A Time Of War
An Exercise For Professor X
Explanation
Exposition Of The Contents Of A Cab
Extracts From Addresses To The Academy Of Fine Ideas
Extraordinary References
Fabliau Of Florida
A Fading Of The Sun
Farewell To Florida
Farewell Without A Guitar
Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour
First Warmth
A Fish-scale Sunrise
Floral Decorations For Bananas
The Florist Wears Knee-breeches
Flyer's Fall
For An Old Woman In A Wig
Forces, The Will & The Weather
Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs
From A Junk
From A Vagabond
From The Misery Of Don Joost
From The Packet Of Anacharsis
Gallant Chateau
Ghosts As Cocoons
Gigantomachia
Girl In A Nightgown
The Glass Of Water
God Is Good. It Is A Beautiful Night
A Golden Woman In A Silver Mirror
The Good Man Has No Shape
Good Man, Bad Woman
Gray Room
Gray Stones And Gray Pigeons
The Green Plant
Gubbinal
The Hand As A Being
Headache
The Hermitage At The Centre
Hibiscus On The Sleeping Shores
Hieroglyphica
A High-toned Old Christian Woman
Holiday In Reality
Home Again
Homunculus Et La Belle Etoile
The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm
How Now, O, Brightener
How To Live. What To Do
Human Arrangement
Hymn From A Watermelon Pavilion
I Have Lived So Long Without Rhetoricians
The Idea Of Order At Key West
Idiom Of The Hero
If I Love Thee, I Am Thine
Imago
Imitation Of Sidney: To Stella (miss B?)
In A Bad Time
In A Garden
In The Carolinas
In The Clear Season Of Grapes
In The Element Of Antagonisms
Indian River
The Indigo Glass In The Grass
Infanta Marina
Infernale
Inscription For A Monument
Invective Against Swans
The Irish Cliffs Of Moher
The Jack-rabbit
Jasmines's Beautiful Thoughts Underneath The Willow
Jouga
July Mountain
L'essor Saccade
The Lack Of Repose
Landscape With Boat
Large Red Man Reading
Last Looks At The Lilacs
Late Hymn From The Myrrh-mountain
The Latest Freed Man
Le Monocle De Mon Oncle
Lebensweisheitspielerei
Les Plus Belles Pages
Less And Less Human, O Savage Spirit
Lettres D'un Soldat (1914-1915)
Life Is Motion
Life On A Battleship
Like Decorations In A Nigger Cemetery
Lions In Sweden
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 1. Morning Song
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 10
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 11. Shower
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 12. In The Sun
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 13. Song
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 14. In April
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 15. Eclogue
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 16
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 17
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 18
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 19
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 2
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 20. Pierrot
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 3. A Concert Of Fishes
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 4
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 5. Vignette
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 6
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 7. Noon-clearing
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 8
The Little June Book To E.v.m.: 9
The Load Of Sugar-cane
Local Objects
Loneliness In Jersey City
Long And Sluggish Lines
Looking Across The Fields And Watching The Birds Fly
A Lot Of People Bathing In A Stream
Lunar Paraphrase
Lytton Strachey, Also, Enters Into Heaven
Madame La Fleurie
Man And Bottle
Man Carrying Thing
The Man On The Dump
The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad
The Man With The Blue Guitar
Mandolin And Liqueurs
Martial Cadenza
Meditation
Meditation Celestial & Terrestrial
Memorandum
Men Made Out Of Words
The Men That Are Falling
Metaphor As Degeneration
Metaphors Of A Magnifico
Metropolitan Melancholy
Montrachet-le-jardin
The Motive For Metaphor
Mountains Covered With Cats
Mozart, 1935
Mrs. Alfred Uruguay
Mud Master
A Mythology Reflects Its Region. Here
The Naked Eye Of The Aunt
Negation
New England Verses
The News And The Weather
Night-song
The Night-wind Of August
No Possum, No Sop, No Taters
Nomad Exquisite
Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself
Note On Moonlight
Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction: Conclusion
Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction: It Must Be Abstract
Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction: It Must Change
Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction: It Must Give Pleasure
Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction: Prelude
The Novel
Nuances Of A Theme By Williams
Nudity At The Capital
Nudity In The Colonies
Nuns Painting Water-lilies
O Florida, Venereal Soil
Oak Leaves Are Hands
Ode
Of Bright & Blue Birds & The Gala Sun
Of Hartford In A Purple Light
Of Heaven Considered As A Tomb
Of Mere Being
Of Modern Poetry
Of The Manner Of Addressing Clouds
Of The Surface Of Things
The Old Lutheran Bells At Home
An Old Man Asleep
On An Old Horn
On The Adequacy Of Landscape
On The Road Home
On The Way To The Bus
One Of The Inhabitants Of The West
An Ordinary Evening In New Haven
The Ordinary Women
Our Stars Come From Ireland
Out Of Those Hibiscuses Of Damozels
Out Of Wedlock
Outside The Hospital
The Owl In The Sarcophagus
Owl's Clover: 1. The Old Woman & The Statue
Owl's Clover: 2. The Statue At The World's End
Owl's Clover: 3. The Greenest Continent
Owl's Clover: 4. A Duck For Dinner
Owl's Clover: 5. Sombre Figuration
Page From A Tale
Paisant Chronicle
Palace Of The Babies
The Paltry Nude Starts On A Spring Voyage
Parochial Theme
The Pastor Caballero
A Pastoral Nun
The Pediment Of Appearance
Peter Parasol
Peter Quince At The Clavier
Phases
Piano Practice At The Academy Of The Holy Angels
Pieces
The Place Of The Solitaires
The Plain Sense Of Things
The Planet On The Table
The Pleasures Of Merely Circulating
The Plot Against The Giant
Ploughing On Sunday
The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain
Poem With Rhythms
Poem Written At Morning
The Poems Of Our Climate
Poesie Abrutie
Poetry Is A Destructive Force
Polo Ponies Practicing
A Postcard From The Volcano
The Prejudice Against The Past
Prelude To Objects
Presence Of An External Master Of Knowledge
A Primitive Like And Orb
Primordia In The Northwest
Primordia In The South
Prologues To What Is Possible
The Public Square
Puella Parvula
The Pure Good Of Theory
Quatrain
Quatrain
Questions Are Remarks
A Quiet Normal Life
A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts
Re-statement Of Romance
The Reader
Reality Is An Activity Of The Most August Imagination
The Red Fern
Red Loves Kit
The Region November
Repetitions Of A Young Captain
Reply To Papini
The Revolutionist Stop For Orangeade
The River Of Rivers In Connecticut
The Rock
The Role Of The Idea In Poetry
Romance For A Demoiselle Lying In The Grass
A Room On A Garden
The Sail Of Ulysses
Sailing After Lunch
Saint John And The Back-ache
Saturday Night At The Chiropodist's; Histoire
Sea Surface Full Of Clouds
Secret Man
The Shape Of The Coroner
The Sick Man
The Silver Plough-boy
Six Discordant Songs: Contrary Theses (1)
Six Discordant Songs: Contrary Theses (2)
Six Discordant Songs: Jumbo
Six Discordant Songs: Metamorphosis
Six Discordant Songs: Phosphor Reading By His Own Light
Six Discordant Songs: The Search For Sound Free From Motion
Six Significant Landscapes
Sketch Of The Ultimate Politician
Snow And Stars
The Snow Man
So-and-so Reclining On Her Couch
Solitaire Under The Oaks
Some Friends From Pascagoula
Somnambulisma
Sonatina To Hans Christian
Song
Song
Song
Song Of Fixed Accord
Sonnet
Sonnet: 1
Sonnet: 10
Sonnet: 11
Sonnet: 12
Sonnet: 13
Sonnet: 14
Sonnet: 2
Sonnet: 3
Sonnet: 4
Sonnet: 5
Sonnet: 6
Sonnet: 7
Sonnet: 8
Sonnet: 9
The Souls Of Women At Night
St. Armorer's Church From The Outside
Stars At Tallapoosa
Street Songs: 1. The Pigeons
Street Songs: 2. The Beggar
Street Songs: 3. Statuary
Street Songs: 3. The Minstrel
Study Of Images 1
Study Of Images 2
Study Of Two Pears
The Sun This March
Sunday Morning
The Surprises Of The Superhuman
Table Talk
Tattoo
Tea
Tea At The Palaz Of Hoon
Testamentum
Theory
Things Of August
Thinking Of A Relation Between The Images Of Methaphors
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird
This As Including That
This Solitude Of Cataracts
Though Valentine Brings Love
A Thought Revolved
Thunder By The Musician
To An Old Philosopher In Rome
To Madame Alda, Singing A Song, In A White Gown
To Miss Gage
To The Morn
To The One Of Fictive Music
To The Roaring Wind
Tradition
Two At Norfolk
Two Figures In Dense Violet Light
Two Illustrations That The World Is What You Make Of It: 1
Two Illustrations That The World Is What You Make Of It: 2
Two Letters: 1. A Letter From
Two Letters: 2. A Letter To
Two Tales Of Liadoff
Two Versions Of The Same Poem, That Which Cannot Be Fixed: 1
Two Versions Of The Same Poem, That Which Cannot Be Fixed: 2
The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract
United Dames Of America
Vacancy In The Park
A Valentine
Valley Candle
Variations On A Summer Day
The Virgin Carrying A Lantern
Vita Mea
Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu
A Weak Mind In The Mountains
The Weeping Burgher
The Well Dressed Man With A Beard
What They Call Red Cherry Pie
What We See Is What We Think
Who Lies Dead?
The Widow
Wild Ducks, People And Distances
The Wind Shifts
A Window In The Slums
Winter Bells
The Woman In Sunshine
Woman Looking At A Vase Of Flowers
A Woman Sings A Song For A Soldier Come Home
The Woman That Had More Babies Than That
The Woman Who Blamed Life On A Spaniard
A Word With Jose Rodriguez-feo
The World As Meditation
World Without Peculiarity
The Worms At Heaven's Gate
Yellow Afternoon
You Say This Is The Iris?
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Customer Reviews

Collected and worth reading through
Wallace Stevens is one of those rare writers who had a golden touch with words. "Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose" not only brings together several collections and uncompiled poems, but also selections from his journals, essays and letters. And in all of these, he showed himself to be a thoughtful, intelligent and very talented man.

Over his lifetime, Stevens wrote several books of poetry, but his exquisite poems are best taken by themselves: the lush grandeur of "Sunday Morning," the hymnlike "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle," and the humid grittiness of "O Florida, Venereal Soil." He takes multiple looks at "Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird," and the lush "Six Significant Landscapes."

In other poems, Stevens dips into outright surrealism, like in the delicate "Tattoo" ("There are filaments of your eyes/On the surface of the water/And in the edges of the snow"), and also adds a meditative bent into "The Snow Man" ("For the listener, who listens in the snow,/And, nothing himself, beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is").

But Stevens was a man of many talents -- there is a trio of one-act plays, erudite and a bit whimsical, and which have his usual thoughts on art and poetry woven into some of their passages. It is followed by the essay collection "The Necessary Angel," which reflects on the nature of imagination, poetry, art, and the role of the poet in a society. His "uncollected" prose is not so tight -- there are literary experiments, snippets of atmospheric fiction, and sprawling essays on all sorts of subjects ("Cattle Kings of Florida"?). Even included are acceptance speeches and sound bites, like an enlightening little nugget on Walt Whitman.

Finishing up the volume is a selection from Stevens' notebooks, ranging from puzzling ("Poetry is a metaphor") to revealing ("After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption"). And finally we get his letters and journals, which are friendly, relaxed, laid-back -- and still show that his mind was always thinking about his art.

"Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry And Prose" is probably the best way to get a full view of Stevens' work. And his mind, too -- his poetry gives little glimpses of his attitude toward the world and his art, but his essays and journals add to that. By the time you hit the final page, it's hard not to feel like you know Stevens.

If nothing else, Stevens' writing can be read just because it is exquisitely beautiful. He lavished details all over almost every poem he wrote; his style tends to be a bit on the ornate side -- Stevens freely uses the more exotic terms -- such as "opalescence," "pendentives" and "muleteers" -- wrapped up in complex verse, sometimes with a rhyme scheme and sometimes free-form.

His prose style isn't any less impressive -- Stevens could lavish as much on his essays as he did in his poetry, and showed that he was very good at arguing his points. The last parts of the book are sprinkled with anecdotes about his travels, bits of poetry, and plenty of beautiful imagery ("The streets are blue with mist this morning").

Wallace Stevens is known for his exquisite, lush poetry, but the full "Collected Poetry and Prose" shows just what an intelligent, cultured man he was. A must-have.

Masterful Edition
I want to offer a quick word about the Library of America edition - it is fantastic! I hesitated to buy this work because of its length (1000+ pages), but Library of America has somehow fit all this material into a modestly-sized volume that is literally not much larger or heavier than my "Selected Works of Wallace Stevens" of 300 pages! They were able to achieve this without using onion paper - it seems to be a durable bond, and is very pleasing.

This is an edition of verse and prose that I will treasure for a long time.

The greatest poet of the 20th Century in a very complete collection
Wallace Stevens is my favorite poet. This Library of America collection is to be preferred as a source of his writing: it includes a number of additional poems relative to his Collected Poems (including the controversial long poem "Owl's Clover"), as well as alternate versions of some poems, juvenilia, and also Stevens's essays.

Stevens is known, it seems to me, in two separate ways. In the popular sense, he is known for a series of remarkable early poems, in most cases not terribly long, notable for striking images and quite beautiful prosody. Of these poems the most famous is surely "Sunday Morning" -- other examples are "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", "Peter Quince at the Clavier", "Sea Surface Full of Clouds", "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon", "The Emperor of Ice Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Of Modern Poetry". The great bulk of these come from his first collection, Harmonium, and indeed from the first edition of Harmonium, published in 1923. These were certainly my favorite among his poems on first reading. And they remain favorites.

But his critical reputation rests strikingly on a completely different set of poems, all later than those mentioned above. (Though it must be acknowledged that at least "Sunday Morning" and "The Idea of Order at Key West" as well as two early long poems, "The Comedian as the Letter C" and "The Monocle de Mon Oncle", are in general highly regarded critically. And that most of his early work is certainly treated with respect.)

I think it's fair to say that "late Stevens" begins with "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction", perhaps his most highly regarded work. Of course the terms "late" and "early" are odd applied to Stevens. His first successful poems appeared in 1915 (including "Sunday Morning"), when he was 36. He was 44 when the first edition of Harmonium came out. That's pretty late for "early"! And by the 1942 publication of "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" he was 63. Indeed, his production from 1942 through his death in 1955 was remarkable: two major collections each with several long poems as well as at least another full collection worth of late poems, some included in this _Collected Poems_ but quite a few more not collected until after his death.

What to say about late Stevens? The most obvious adjective is "austere". But that doesn't always apply -- he could also be quite playful. However, there is never the lushness of a "Sunday Morning" or "Sea Surface Full of Clouds" in the late works. The sentences tend to extraordinary length, but the internal rhythms are involving. The poems are all quite philosophical, much concerned with the importance of poetry, the nature of reality versus perceptions of reality, and, perhaps more simply, with growing old. (A Stevens theme, to be sure, that can be traced at least back to "The Monocle de Mon Oncle".)

So: Stevens is an impossibly wonderful, remarkable, poet, either early or late. His lush and imagist early work remains a delight, and his philosophically involving late work rewards rereading and concentration. He is a poet to whom you can return again and again, and he will always be new.