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Biography of Wallace StevensName: Wallace StevensBirth Date: October 2, 1879 Death Date: August 2, 1955 Place of Birth: Reading, Pennsylvania, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: poet Wallace Stevens American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a virtuoso of language, a master of rhyme and verbal music, of gay and thoughtful rhythms, and of precise and exotic diction.Wallace Stevens was a successful lawyer and businessman, as well as an important poet. But too much has been made of the combination of esthete and businessman in him. Poetry for him was an irresistible urge ("one writes poetry because one must"), whereas business success was largely a means to attain the independence and privacy he needed for his poetry. He was from the start a poet's poet, a brilliant craftsman, but general critical acclaim came slowly. His early verse shows the influence of the French symbolists--the romantic skepticism, irony, dandified wit, and self-deprecation of Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Jules Laforgue. Stevens stood apart from groups, but he shared the imagists' devotion to concrete images and the general …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…Wallace Stevens (1963); John J. Enck, Wallace Stevens: Images and Judgments (1964); Joseph N. Riddel, The Clairvoyant Eye: The Poetry and Poetics of Wallace Stevens (1965); Herbert J. Stern, Wallace Stevens: Art of Uncertainty (1966); Ronald Sukenick, Wallace Stevens, Musing the Obscure: Readings, an Interpretation, and a Guide to the Collected Poetry (1967); and Tony Sharpe, Wallace Stevens: A Literary Life (1999). Essays on Stevens by various critics are in Ashley Brown and Robert S. Haller, eds., The Achievement of Wallace Stevens (1962), and Marie Boroff, ed., Wallace Stevens: A Collection of Critical Essays (1963). Bates, Milton J., Wallace Stevens: a mythology of self, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Brazeau, Peter, Parts of a world: Wallace Stevens remembered: an oral biography, San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985, 1983. Richardson, Joan, Wallace Stevens, New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986-c1988.Stevens, Holly, Souvenirs and prophecies: the young Wallace Stevens, New York: Knopf, 1977, 1976. Wallace Stevens: a celebration, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. |