false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223647740m/75506.jpg 75506 2 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 <i>Collected Poetry & Prose</i> 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." 73042 1 10 1997 Wallace Stevens : Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America) total:261|5:188|4:53|3:15|2:4|1:1| 261 1206 341 19 4 0 false false Thu Jun 21 13:24:36 -0700 2007 Tue Dec 11 08:30:43 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri May 11 07:39:58 -0700 2007 Fri May 11 09:13:51 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sat Oct 17 14:35:27 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 14:36:13 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Sat Sep 15 18:52:55 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 15 19:43:01 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 22 07:06:13 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 22 07:10:44 -0800 2008
Over Christmas holiday, in a fit of over-relaxation, I found a Harold Bloom lecture on iTunes University (under the Yale Lectures) section. He's doing a close reading o...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Jun 15 17:58:11 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 15 18:02:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Tue Nov 20 16:52:11 -0800 2007 Sat Jan 26 16:08:46 -0800 2008
-The Snowman
-The Idea of Order at Key West
-To an Old Philosopher in Rome
-Man with the Blue Guitar]]> 5 0 false false Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Jul 26 18:35:15 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 26 21:09:19 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Thu Jun 28 23:56:48 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 28 23:58:26 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Sun Jul 22 14:20:27 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 23 07:18:16 -0700 2007 I have several editions of Stevens, but this is by far the best. Portable and complete. The Library of America makes very servicable books, with the ribbon bookmark and the powerful spine . . .

]]> 0 0 false false Mon Jun 16 09:00:35 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 16 09:03:14 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Thu Jan 17 08:00:01 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 17 08:00:01 -0800 2008 5 0 false false Tue Aug 07 08:15:41 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 13 13:37:47 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Wed Apr 25 06:45:02 -0700 2007 Wed Apr 25 06:46:22 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Jan 28 21:58:19 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 28 21:58:55 -0800 2008 5 0 false false Wed Jul 30 11:45:02 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 30 11:50:52 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Fri Mar 28 07:08:14 -0700 2008 Fri Mar 28 07:09:35 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Fri Feb 15 00:48:26 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 15 00:48:39 -0800 2008 5 0 false false Thu Mar 01 14:28:23 -0800 2007 Thu Mar 01 14:29:03 -0800 2007 0 0 false false Mon Nov 23 17:26:31 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 23 17:26:31 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=75506