Reviews for Selected Poems

The average rating for Selected Poems based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-11 00:00:00 Kelly Adrian Wallace Stevens' poetry is non-easy, which likely is why to most readers, even those of poetry, these poems are regarded less highly than by more academically inclined aficionados of the art form, who are apt to rank the man similarly to others such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Well, enough of that. This is not a final review of the book, more an introduction to such. Of particular note should be the "references" section near the end. I'll add more to the review soon, watch for messages at the top. Stevens (1879-1955) was, in the words of poetryfoundation.org, one of America's most respected poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality. Because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his work, Stevens was sometimes considered a willfully difficult poet. But he was also acknowledged as an eminent abstractionist and a provocative thinker, and that reputation has continued since his death. In 1975, for instance, noted literary critic Harold Bloom, whose writings on Stevens include the imposing Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate, called him "the best and most representative American poet of our time." Stevens was not himself an academic, though he did complete three years at Harvard before withdrawing for lack of funds. After work in New York city as a journalist, he decided to devote himself full-time to literature. His father cautioned him to address his financial needs first, and Stevens in 1901 enrolled in the New York School of Law. In 1904 he was admitted to the New York Bar. After working with some legal firms he assumed a position in an insurance company in 1908. He married in 1909, and the couple had a daughter in 1924. In 1916, following various mergers of the insurance company, Stevens finally assumed a job with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, and moved to Hartford. He stayed with this company, where he was appointed vice-president in 1934, and in this city, for the rest of his life, though he travelled often. (Please see the link above for additional details of Stevens' life.) Unlike most artists, Stevens never had difficulty joining his creative life with steady employment at a white-collar job. He often composed poetry while he walked to work. For many years after he had begun publishing poetry, many co-workers knew nothing of his creative life and growing reputation. in 1955 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems. this collection, and Stevens' published works The collection I'm reviewing was published in 1959. I bought it in college, probably in 1964-64, in one of the two semesters that I was an English major. A number of the poems have check marks in the Contents. I assume now these were assigned or suggested for reading. Some of these have brief notes scribbled near them, probably remarks made in class by the prof. This volume is still available used now, but it's not really worth buying in my opinion. If you want to own a copy of Steven's poems, you can get, for a few dollars more, a new copy of his Collected poems, which has a cover very similar to my book, and confused me for a while. This collection has all the poems that Stevens wanted preserved for posterity, probably 3 or 4 times as many as my volume. Otherwise, to just sample Stevens, there might be stuff online, and of course most any decent library would have something. References As I worked my way through this volume, I quickly collected a few things which helped. - One that I've had perhaps as long as the poems is The Achievement of Wallace Stevens. Published in 1962, it's a collection of 19 essays by writers such as Marianne Moore, Llewelyn Powys, R.P. Blackmur, Randall Jarrell, and Samuel French Morse. It has a useful introduction, and a very extensive bibliography. Unfortunately it does not have an index listing the poems mentioned in the essays. - An absolutely great reference that I came across at is a lengthy essay by Dana Wilde, titled "An Introduction to Reading Wallace Stevens as a Poet of the Human Spirit." A PDF version can be downloaded. Highly recommended. - I picked up a copy of A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens by Eleanor Cook. This contains a 25-page biography, a thirty-page Appendix called "How to read poetry, including Stevens", which I haven't read but should (it contains very detailed suggestions); a glossary of several of the poetic terms which Cook using in the book; a Bibliography; and an index to the poems in the main part of the book. I think all poems from the Collected works are included, organized by the collection they originally appeared in. For each poem, Cook provides what she calls a "gloss", in the sense of an explanation or commentary on text. These range from a few lines to many pages, including such info as when and where the poem was first published, commentary on the meaning or referents of the title, explication of unusual words used by Stevens, and so forth. I found a lot of the glosses to be marginally useful, but also many to be quite informative. I'm glad I have the book. - Finally, I also have The Necessary Angel, a collection of essays that Stevens wrote in the years 1942-1951. Its subtitle is, "Essays on Reality and the Imagination." I've looked at this only very briefly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Previous review: The Fall Camus Random review: The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Short Fiction about the short fiction Next review: On Tyranny important book Previous library review: East of Eden Next library review: All the King's Men

Review # 2 was written on 2013-09-30 00:00:00 Hugo Low I tried to read this a month or so back & gave up in a mixture of despair and horror. The dichotomy was complete - on the one side were the poems themselves, writhing in sensuous colours and exploding with weird life; on the other side was my little tiny brain which emitted whirrrs and whee sounds and fell on its side with its wheels gradually coming to a halt. Between my brain and the poems was an unbridgeable chasm made of thin highly polished glass. I could read these poems forwards and backwards, I could be as close to them as I am to the gorgeous fish in the aquarium, but they were in their world and I was in mine and there was no way to make any intelligible connection. Except to say - look, a green one, look, a yellow one. After a while those banal observations turned into self-mockery. I couldn't understand the first thing about these poems. Nothing. So I checked out a couple of essays about Mr Stevens' oeuvre. And I didn't understand the essays either. In fact I got the dismaying feeling that the essayists were not 100% sure what Mr Stevens was on about either, but they were already way past their deadlines. Wallace Stevens seems to be a poet universally acclaimed by everyone over the age of 12 to be one of the 20th Century's very greatest, but no one seems able to give much of a clue as to what he's on about at all. I don't know whether it's me that's wrong and dimwitted or if it's everyone else. Am I the one person looking on and saying in an appalled voice that the Emperor of Ice Cream has not got any cone at all? Tea at the Palaz of Hoon by Wallace Stevens Not less because in purple I descended The western day through what you called The loneliest air, not less was I myself. What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard? What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears? What was the sea whose tide swept through me there? Out of my mind the golden ointment rained, And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard. I was myself the compass of that sea: I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw Or heard or felt came not but from myself; And there I found myself more truly and more strange. (Feel free to get back to me about this one.)