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
beauty art would-be
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
lasts illusion disillusion
Disillusion is the last illusion.
moving rivers flying
The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
paradise imperfect
The imperfect is our paradise.
perception mind essentials
Poetry has to be something more than a conception of the mind. It has to be a revelation of nature. Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.
good-friend ideas air
What is there in life except one's ideas, Good air, good friend, what is there in life?
ethics painting
Ethics are no more a part of poetry than theyare of painting.
whales imagination brain
So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio--remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales--we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination.
villain photogenic
True villains are extremely photogenic.
fiction finals belief
The prologues are over. It is a question, now, Of final belief. So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.
sky despair cry
the windy sky Cries out a literate despair.
yellow orange skins
The yellow glistens. It glistens with various yellows, Citrons, oranges and greens Flowering over the skin.
dwelling light air
Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.
snow listeners
For the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.