Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens, one of this century's foremost American poets, has been both praised and blamed for the 'difficulty' of his poems, and has bemused those seeking to reconcile the sobriety of his career as an insurance lawyer with the extravagance of his poetry. Tony Sharpe explores the symbiotic and [...]
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Wallace Stevens, one of this century's foremost American poets, has been both praised and blamed for the 'difficulty' of his poems, and has bemused those seeking to reconcile the sobriety of his career as an insurance lawyer with the extravagance of his poetry. Tony Sharpe explores the symbiotic and antagonistic relations between Stevens's literary life and his working life as a senior executive; outlining the personal, historical and publishing contexts which shaped his writing career, and suggesting how awareness of these contexts throws new light on the poems. Stevens was uncompromising in his insistence on the extraordinary importance of poetry to the ordinary world; and in this appreciative but not uncritical study, Sharpe tries to see the man behind the mandarin, while seeking not to simplify the challengingly sumptuous austerities of a major modernist writer.