Wallace Stevens : Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America)

Wallace Stevens : Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America) | Wallace Stevens, Frank Kermode | One of the best LoA volumes

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Wallace Stevens : ...

	Wallace Stevens : Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America) Wallace Stevens, Frank Kermode Library of America, 1997 - 1030 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wallace Stevens' unique voice combined meditative speculation and what he called the "essential gaudiness of poetry" in a body of work of astonishing profusion and exuberance. Now, for the first time, the works of America's supreme poet of the imagination are collected in one authoritative volume.

The greatest poet of the 20th Century in a very complete collection

Wallace Stevens is my favorite poet. This Library of America collection is to be preferred as a source of his writing: it includes a number of additional poems relative to his Collected Poems (including the controversial long poem "Owl's Clover"), as well as alternate versions of some poems, juvenilia, and also Stevens's essays.

Stevens is known, it seems to me, in two separate ways. In the popular sense, he is known for a series of remarkable early poems, in most cases not terribly long, notable for striking images and quite beautiful prosody. Of these poems the most famous is surely "Sunday Morning" -- other examples are "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", "Peter Quince at the Clavier", "Sea Surface Full of Clouds", "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon", "The Emperor of Ice Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Of Modern Poetry". The great bulk of these come from his first collection, Harmonium, and indeed from the first edition of Harmonium, published in 1923. These were certainly my favorite among his poems on first reading. And they remain favorites.

But his critical reputation rests strikingly on a completely different set of poems, all later than those mentioned above. (Though it must be acknowledged that at least "Sunday Morning" and "The Idea of Order at Key West" as well as two early long poems, "The Comedian as the Letter C" and "The Monocle de Mon Oncle", are in general highly regarded critically. And that most of his early work is certainly treated with respect.)

I think it's fair to say that "late Stevens" begins with "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction", perhaps his most highly regarded work. Of course the terms "late" and "early" are odd applied to Stevens. His first successful poems appeared in 1915 (including "Sunday Morning"), when he was 36. He was 44 when the first edition of Harmonium came out. That's pretty late for "early"! And by the 1942 publication of "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction" he was 63. Indeed, his production from 1942 through his death in 1955 was remarkable: two major collections each with several long poems as well as at least another full collection worth of late poems, some included in this _Collected Poems_ but quite a few more not collected until after his death.

What to say about late Stevens? The most obvious adjective is "austere". But that doesn't always apply -- he could also be quite playful. However, there is never the lushness of a "Sunday Morning" or "Sea Surface Full of Clouds" in the late works. The sentences tend to extraordinary length, but the internal rhythms are involving. The poems are all quite philosophical, much concerned with the importance of poetry, the nature of reality versus perceptions of reality, and, perhaps more simply, with growing old. (A Stevens theme, to be sure, that can be traced at least back to "The Monocle de Mon Oncle".)

So: Stevens is an impossibly wonderful, remarkable, poet, either early or late. His lush and imagist early work remains a delight, and his philosophically involving late work rewards rereading and concentration. He is a poet to whom you can return again and again, and he will always be new.

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One of the best LoA volumes

Stevens' Collected Prose and Poetry is essential for anyone interested in wonderful art and thought. It includes the entirety of his 1955 Collected Poems, all of his lovely essay volume The Necessary Angel, all of Opus Posthumous, early versions of Owl's Clover and The Comedian as the Letter C, many poems of his youth, diary entries, aphorisms...in short, all the Stevens you'll ever need.

And you do need Stevens. Yes, he's 'hard', but the hardness is not opaque, a la Gertrude Stein. You may not always understand him but he always means SOMETHING, and something crucially correct, the key to which is probably found by rereading the work in question, or reading around in his other poems and prose--hence the special need for a volume like this one. His is a fairly coherent and remarkably advanced vision of life, of a complexity and relevance surpassed by those of very few artists and philosophers ever. Basically, if you possess life, and wish to inhabit that life as fully as possible, sounding its deepest depth and furthest limits, Stevens is one of the resources you'll need. There may be poets more masterful with language--though Stevens is staggering with language--but which has ever grasped better what resources the meeting of words and world can open up for us? Find Stevens, absorb Stevens, you'll find yourself somewhere I can hardly imagine. Best use of forty bucks I can think of.

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Nothing like a Wallace Stevens poem

There's something about Wallace Stevens poems. They remain in your head for days and their meanings change as you turn them over and over in your head. I love his poetry but I also enjoy the essays he wrote. And it is fascinating to read his articles on indemnity insurance.

for lovers of poetry

Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose is the best single collection of Stevens' work I have found yet. The inclusion of his essays as well as his verse provides deeper insight into the mind and life of this poet. If your're looking to give someone a gift of some substance, this volume is perfect. While larger in size than most volumes of poetry (it contains, after all, Stevens' published work), it is small enough to keep on the nightstand or beside one's chair. If you're on the fence about getting this, don't hestitate to buy it. You will not regret your choice.

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The edition to own

This volume contains all the poems by the great poet, including unpublished ones. It also includes the Necessary Angel as well as miscellaneous prose such as speeches, interviews, magazine articles, a sample of his journals, notebooks as well as his letters. Most importantly, the text of the poems is far more accurate than that of Collected Poems by Alfred A. Knopf. It is an indispensable volume for all those seriously interested in Wallace Stevens.

My only slight complaint is that the notes are extremely terse, and do not annotate many important poems. They do, however, translate words and phrases in languages other than English. For more elaborate notes and glosses on Stevens's work, I recommend A Guide to Wallace Stevens by Eleanor Cook.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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