Quasi-unintelligibility (Coda) May 3, 2013: “I have the greatest dislike for explanations,” an emphatic Stevens once wrote to Ronald Lane Latimer, the pseudonymous editor of Alcestis Press, a small and short-lived leftist publishing outfit in New York City back in the 1930s. “As soon as people are perfectly sure of a poem they are just as likely as not to have no further interest in [...] by Timothy Donnelly

Quasi-unintelligibility (Part 5) April 30, 2013: To repeat: Stevens’s “Man Carrying Thing” kicks off with a clear-cut statement about what a poem “must” do, i.e., “resist the intelligence / Almost successfully.” But the statement itself, which is part of a poem, presents no resistance to the intelligence at all—its meaning is “obvious,” to recycle a word from the poem’s [...] by Timothy Donnelly

Quasi-unintelligibility (Part 4) April 25, 2013: Less than a decade after Stevens’s “Man Carrying Thing” first appeared in Yale Review, its first sentence had become so useful and succinct an apology for his more challenging work, it would even show up in his New York Times obituary, which ran on August 3, 1955, the day after he died of stomach cancer in Hartford’s St. Francis [...] by Timothy Donnelly

The Poetry of Our Youth April 25, 2013: Why can’t I hear the music of my youth with objectivity? I really don’t know if The Unforgettable Fire is a great album or not because I loved U2 so ardently in high school that the profound and sticky wistfulness of unfulfilled teenage desire roars back to life at each listening. Of course, many songs I still like from that time I know [...] by Camille Guthrie

Quasi-unintelligibilty (Part 3) April 19, 2013: After having wandered somewhat far from the discussion of quasi-unintelligibility in my last post I thought it might be a good idea to revisit the topic before moving forward. I had set out last week to enumerate as straightforwardly as possible some of the elements of Stevens’s “Man Carrying Thing” that appealed to me on rereading it for [...] by Timothy Donnelly

Quasi-unintelligibility (Part 2) April 11, 2013: I mentioned in my previous post that I would consider more closely Wallace Stevens’s “Man Carrying Thing” in my next post, and that means now. You can read the poem here. Let me tell you what I like about it. (1) I like the poem’s first sentence and how it’s lineated: “The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost [...] by Timothy Donnelly

Jeffrey Yang Leads Us into the Abyss March 20, 2013: [caption id="attachment_62944" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Yves Klein in the Void Room (Raum der Leere), Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, January 1961.[/caption] “I used to keep a list of books in which ‘the abyss’ appeared — the [...] by Lindsay Garbutt

Early Wallace Stevens Poetry at The Harvard Advocate Blog November 26, 2012: The Harvard Advocate blog is reaching back into their archives and serving up some early poetical works by Wallace Stevens. To put things in context, they write: Stevens’ first book of poetry, Harmonium, was published when he was forty-four; scholars tend to agree that he completed his greatest works relatively late in his career. But [...] by Harriet Staff

What Could Wallace Stevens Teach Romney? October 3, 2012: In a recent post, New Yorker blogger Michelle Dean wonders what sort of politician Wallace Stevens might have been. Stevens earned the equivalent of $350,000 annually as an insurance company VP. He was acutely aware of his remove from the average citizen, and was "shaken" by criticism from the left. One critic to whom [publisher and [...] by Harriet Staff

Successful Poets Who Kept Their ‘Other’ Jobs August 14, 2012: While many of us dream of becoming full-time writers, the fact is, several of the most successful poets in recent history have remained at their day jobs. Here are some examples from Publisher's Weekly. Wallace Stevens Day Job: Insurance Executive In perhaps the most direct refusal to trade in a 9-to-5 for a laurel-resting [...] by Harriet Staff