Word: stevenses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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THE THEORY of evolving fictions is the basis for Stevens' poetry, and it is most explicitly dealt with in The Necessary Angel, his collection of essays. His basic contention is that "the world is ugly/and the people are sad"; we are "natives of poverty, children of malheur." In order to...
Morse tantalizes with the range of anecdotal material available, but, whether because of his particular critical biases or because of his own selfconsciousness as a scholar, he never delivers. He tells of Stevens' reading one of his poems at a Greenwich Village party in 1914, but instead of reconstructing the...
THE MORSE biography provides an excellent sense of Stevens' poetry. He has presented the first really competent and thorough discussion of Stevens' early work, most of which appeared in the Harvard Advocute and which Stevens later said gave him "the creeps" when re-eading them, and he is extremely helpful...
Morse is good when he is making a case, and some of his writing, particularly the last chapter of the book, is stunning. And his collation of the letters, diaries, and journals with the poems provide some striking insights: the actual events which led to "The Emperor of Ice Cream...
AND THERE seem to be weaknesses in Morse's treatment of the poetry: he never confronts the idea of the moment of poetic vision, nor Stevens' reticence to deal with love in his work; he fails occasionally to bring passion to his reading (particularly when dealing with "Notes Toward A...