Word: stevenses
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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...
Samuel French Morse was the editor of Opus Posthumous, Wallace Stevens' uncollected works. He also edited the only paperback anthology of Stevens available in this country, and his biography of Stevens was authorized by the widow and daughter of the poet after his death in 1955. As long as ten...
Morse's own method of attack has been to arrange his book in alternating chapters devoted to periods of Stevens' life and to the poetry written during them. The chapters on the poetry trace the development of Stevens' artistic career. They are mostly interesting, competent, efficient; they provide some illuminating...
The catalogue of Stevens' life reads like the driest of textbooks. One does not ask for a disquisition on the businessman versus poet problem, nor for a grand drama of suffering and vatic triumph; one only asks to know Stevens, to get the smell of his personality.
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...