Wallace+Stevens+Bio

**Wallace Stevens**
//Audience of Wallace Stevens:// The audience of Wallace Stevens was formed through his three major themes his poems consisted of: ecstasy, apathy, and some reluctance between the two. Obviously, children wouldn't be and should't be reading poems that consist of ecstasy. Also, older people may be against reading it; therefore, the only audience left is the middle-aged adults. These adults would most likely read about his poems to get the thrill and excitement that they may or may not get during intercourse.

//History of Stevens:// Stevens was born on October 2, 1879 and began writing in the 1930s. The main chunk or time where he produced most of his poems was after 50 years old; however, he did write four poems from a sequence entitled "Phases" at the age of 35. At 1923 Stevens wrote his first book of rococo inventiveness entitled Harmonium. He then made two more major books in 1920s and 1930s and in the 1940s he made three more. In 1951 "The Auroras of Autumn" received the annual //National Book Award for Poetry// twice.

Cultural Effect on the World: The Poetry Foundation states that "by the early 1950s Stevens was regarded as one of America's greatest contemporary poets, an artist whose precise abstractions exerted substantial influence on other writers" (poetryfoundation). Harold Bloom, an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale, states that Stevens is a vital part of American mythology. If a professor of Humanities praises Stevens for having such good work, then Steven's work must consist of lessons to be learned that Bloom would present in his teachings. This is having an effect upon the students learning the material being presented by Harold Bloom, passing on lessons absorbed and taught by Stevens.

//Aim of Stevens:// The aim of Wallace Stevens was not necessarily pointed towards any individual motivation. He just happened to start writing during his business years. He started at age 35, where he wrote 4 poems, and then by age 50 he started to write more often. By the time he was 60, where most poets stop and look back at their work, Stevens was just coming upon his climax of his career. At age 70, however, he wrote poetry about late old age where he experienced disembodiment.

//Three Texts by Stevens:// The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed
 * Of Modern Poetry**

To something else. Its past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage, And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and With meditation, speak words that in the ear, In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound Of which, an invisible audience listens, Not to the play, but to itself, expressed In an emotion as of two people, as of two Emotions becoming one. The actor is A metaphysician in the dark, twanging An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, Beyond which it has no will to rise. It must Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

The old brown hen and the old blue sky, Between the two we live and die-- The broken cartwheel on the hill.
 * A Continual Conversation with a Silent Man**

As if, in the presence of the sea, We dried our nets and mended sail And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will, One will and many wills, and the wind, Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the eaves, Link, of that tempest, to the farm, The chain of the turquoise hen and sky

And the wheel that broke as the cart went by. It is not a voice that is under the eaves. It is not speech, the sound we hear

In this conversation, but the sound Of things and their motion: the other man, A turquoise monster moving round.

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village.
 * A Metaphor of a Magnifico**

This is old song That will not declare itself. ..

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are Twenty men crossing a bridge Into a village.

That will not declare itself Yet is certain as meaning. ..

The boots of the men clump On the boards of the bridge. The first white wall of the village Rises through fruit-trees. Of what was it I was thinking? So the meaning escapes.

The first white wall of the village... The fruit-trees...

//Literary Devices Used Where and When:// Iambic Pentameter - A line of ten symbols long with every second beat is accented: "She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean" (Stevens).

Blank Verse - A verse without rhyme: "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. She dreams a little, and she feels the dark Encroachment of that old catastrophe, As a calm darkens among water-lights. The pungent oranges and bright, green wings Seem things in some procession of the dead, Winding across wide water, without sound. The day is like wide water, without sound, Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet Over the seas, to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulchre." (Stevens).

Imagery - Visual or descriptive language: "Taste the blood upon his martyred lips, O pensioners, O demagogues and pay-men! This death was his belief though death is a stone. This man loved earth, not heaven, enough to die. The night wind blows upon the dreamer, bent Over words that are life's voluble utterance" (Stevens, Holly 130).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens http://college.cengage.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/stevens.html http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/wallace-stevens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bloom http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/bio.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Modern_Poetry