Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things
Wallace Stevens the poet and Wallace Stevens the insurance executive: for more than one critical generation it has seemed as if these two men were unacquainted--that Stevens was a poet who existed only in the rarefied world of language. However, the idea that Stevens lived a double life, the author maintains, is misleading. This compelling book uncovers what Stevens liked to think of as his "ordinary" life, a life in which the demands of politics, economics, poetry, and everyday distractions coexisted, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not. Examining the full scope of Stevens's career (from the student-poet of the nineteenth century to the award-winning poet of the Cold War years), Longenbach reveals that Stevens was not only aware of events taking place around him, but often inspired by those events. The major achievements of Stevens's career are shown to coalesce around the major historical events of his lifetime (the Great Depression and two World Wars); but Longenbach also dwells on Stevens's two extended periods of poetic silence, exploring the crucial aspects of Steven's life that were not exclusively poetic. Longenbach demonstrates that through Stevens's work in surety law he was far more intimately acquainted with legal and economic concerns than most poets, and he consequently thought deeply about the strengths--and, equally important, the limitations--of poetry as a social product and force.
1102466813
Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things
Wallace Stevens the poet and Wallace Stevens the insurance executive: for more than one critical generation it has seemed as if these two men were unacquainted--that Stevens was a poet who existed only in the rarefied world of language. However, the idea that Stevens lived a double life, the author maintains, is misleading. This compelling book uncovers what Stevens liked to think of as his "ordinary" life, a life in which the demands of politics, economics, poetry, and everyday distractions coexisted, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not. Examining the full scope of Stevens's career (from the student-poet of the nineteenth century to the award-winning poet of the Cold War years), Longenbach reveals that Stevens was not only aware of events taking place around him, but often inspired by those events. The major achievements of Stevens's career are shown to coalesce around the major historical events of his lifetime (the Great Depression and two World Wars); but Longenbach also dwells on Stevens's two extended periods of poetic silence, exploring the crucial aspects of Steven's life that were not exclusively poetic. Longenbach demonstrates that through Stevens's work in surety law he was far more intimately acquainted with legal and economic concerns than most poets, and he consequently thought deeply about the strengths--and, equally important, the limitations--of poetry as a social product and force.
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Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things

Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things

by James Longenbach
Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things
Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things

Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things

by James Longenbach

eBook

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Overview

Wallace Stevens the poet and Wallace Stevens the insurance executive: for more than one critical generation it has seemed as if these two men were unacquainted--that Stevens was a poet who existed only in the rarefied world of language. However, the idea that Stevens lived a double life, the author maintains, is misleading. This compelling book uncovers what Stevens liked to think of as his "ordinary" life, a life in which the demands of politics, economics, poetry, and everyday distractions coexisted, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not. Examining the full scope of Stevens's career (from the student-poet of the nineteenth century to the award-winning poet of the Cold War years), Longenbach reveals that Stevens was not only aware of events taking place around him, but often inspired by those events. The major achievements of Stevens's career are shown to coalesce around the major historical events of his lifetime (the Great Depression and two World Wars); but Longenbach also dwells on Stevens's two extended periods of poetic silence, exploring the crucial aspects of Steven's life that were not exclusively poetic. Longenbach demonstrates that through Stevens's work in surety law he was far more intimately acquainted with legal and economic concerns than most poets, and he consequently thought deeply about the strengths--and, equally important, the limitations--of poetry as a social product and force.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780198023319
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 10/31/1991
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 623 KB

About the Author

University of Rochester

Table of Contents

IThe First Silence
1Pecksniff and Politics3
2The Literary Profession14
3Populism and Imperialism24
IIThinking About War
4The Great War and Post-Romantic Ambition41
5Writing War Poetry53
6The Fellowship of Men that Perish65
7Postwar Comedian83
IIIThe Second Silence
8Surety and Fidelity Claims105
9Paris and the Florida Land Boom120
IVPoetry and Social Change
10Lefts and Lefts135
11Ideas of Ambiguity148
12The Politics of Despair176
VRethinking War
13Violence Within, Violence Without199
14It Must Be Masculine222
15The Heart of the Debacle237
16It Must Be Humdrum249
VIThe Affluent Mundo
17The Ultimate Politician277
18A New Knowledge of Reality293
Notes307
Index of Works331
General Index334
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