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Wallace Stevens was 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.
Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.
Harmonium is a book of poetry by American poet Wallace Stevens. His first book at the age of forty-four, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. This collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred. Harmonium was reissued in 1931 with three poems omitted and fourteen new poems added.
An Essay on Man is a poem published by Alexander Pope in 1733–1734. It was dedicated to Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, hence the opening line: "Awake, St John...". It is an effort to rationalize or rather "vindicate the ways of God to man" (l.16), a variation of John Milton's claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will "justify the ways of God to men" (1.26). It is concerned with the natural order God has decreed for man. Because man cannot know God's purposes, he cannot complain about his position in the Great Chain of Being (ll.33-34) and must accept that "Whatever IS, is RIGHT" (l.292), a theme that was satirized by Voltaire in Candide (1759). More than any other work, it popularized optimistic philosophy throughout England and the rest of Europe.
"Peter Quince at the Clavier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. The poem was first published in 1915 in the "little magazine" Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, edited by Alfred Kreymborg.
"The Ordinary Women" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.
"Nuances of a Theme by Williams" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.
"The Apostrophe to Vincentine" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published before 1923 and is therefore in the public domain according to Librivox.
"Of the Surface of Things" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published in 1919, so it is in the public domain.
"Sunday Morning" is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium. Published in part in the November 1915 issue of Poetry, then in full in 1923 in Harmonium, it is now in the public domain. The first published version can be read at the Poetry web site: The literary critic Yvor Winters considered "Sunday Morning" "the greatest American poem of the twentieth century and... certainly one of the greatest contemplative poems in English".
"The Weeping Burgher" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. Originally published in 1919, it is in the public domain.
"Depression Before Spring" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923). It was first published in 1918 and is therefore in the public domain.
"Tea at the Palaz of Hoon" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1921, so it is in the public domain.
"Palace of the Babies" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1916 and is therefore in the public domain.
"The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. First published in 1921, it is in the public domain in the United States.
"The Death of a Soldier" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. The poem uses free verse to describe the death of a soldier.
"The Surprises of the Superhuman" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1918, so it is in the public domain.
"The Revolutionists stop for Orangeade" is a poem from the second edition (1931) of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium.
"Lunar Paraphrase" is a poem from the second (1931) edition of Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. One of Stevens's "war poems" from "Lettres d'un Soldat" (1918), it is in the public domain.
"Tea" is a poem from Wallace Stevens' first book of poetry, Harmonium. It was first published in 1915 in the journal Rogue, so it is in the public domain.
References
- Bates, Milton J. 1985: University of California Press.
