Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevenswas an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and he spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth2 October 1879
CountryUnited States of America
important modern modernism
One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.
past night lasts
What's down below is in the past Like last night's crickets, far below.
angel past heaven
And what's above is in the past As sure as all the angels are.
lying perfection delight
The imperfect is our paradise. Note that, in this bitterness, delight, Since the imperfect is so hot in us, Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
freedom hate air
Spread outward. Crack the round dome. Break through. Have liberty not as the air within a grave Or down a well. Breathe freedom, oh, my native, In the space of horizons that neither love nor hate.
beautiful ifs
Anything is beautiful if you say it is.
people peculiar gracious
God is gracious to some very peculiar people.
philosophical autumn wind
In a world of universal poverty The philosophers alone will be fat Against the autumn winds In an autumn that will be perpetual.
revolution affair logical
Revolution Is the affair of logical lunatics.
rain past snow
The figures of the past go cloaked. They walk in mist and rain and snow And go, go slowly, but they go.
coffee sacrifice orange
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair. And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice
literature terrible grows
As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.
hero believe mud
Unless we believe in the hero, what is there To believe? Incisive what, the fellow Of what good. Devise. Make him of mud....
wind swans soul
The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks And far beyond the discords of the wind.