Books : Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen out of Desire
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by: Helen Vendler
List Price: $17.50Amazon.com's Price: $15.75 You Save: $1.75 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.52
EAN: 9780674945753
ISBN: 0674945751
Label: Harvard University Press
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 86
Publication Date: April 03, 2006
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Sales Rank: 223382
Studio: Harvard University Press
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The Emperor of Ice-Cream
I acquired the book principally because I was baffled by the poem "The Emperor of Ice-Cream." and hoped that Vendler might have something to say on the topic. As was to be expected, she did much more than offer a few clues. Her reading of the poem is extraordinary - spot on so far as I can tell - and a revelation. (I had thought perhaps we were in an Ice cream Emporium.) With her help, one can see Stevens as sane, human, passionate, very intelligent --- a real poet addressing fundamental, ... Read More
Rating: - Poetry as Question
I was reading yesterday a review in The New Yorker about the recent books on atheism: how good it is and how true, and it struck me how little room there is in our culture's collective mind for independent question. We know all about God, both his existence and his non-existence. We're big knowers of metaphysical things. But really we know next to nothing, and mostly we are not aware enough to even realize that. But if one begins to realize, one finds oneself with very little personal or cultural company, ... Read More
Rating: - Helen Vendler is always magnificent; this is no exception
Vendler is clear, lucid, illuminating, and tough minded. An awfully tough combination to beat. On top of that she is concise and accessible to the educated but non-professional academic such as myself.
Rating: - Beauty is momentary on the mind
Vendler is one of the great critics of the writing of Stevens. In this small work she focuses on shorter works, " Anecdote of the Jar" " The Emperor of Ice Cream" "Postcard from the Volcano" "The Rivers of Rivers in Connecticut" " Of Mere being " "The Dove in Spring" "Somnambulisma". She sees Stevens as tormented by thwarted desire , and gives a certain degree of detail regarding his difficult personal life, including his unhappy marriage.
She writes of his ' sexual loneliness in old age' as reflected ... Read More
Rating: - Very helpful, very acute, close readings of some of Stevens' shorter poems
This is a collection of four lectures on Wallace Stevens, concentrating on shorter poems, and mostly (though by no means entirely) late poems. She argues for Stevens as a poet of passion, particularly the passion of one who desires but cannot have the object of desire -- or desires to desire but can no longer fulfill his desire, perhaps because of age.
I found this very helpful, very readable, very acute. And definitely a prompt to read some of the intense shorter poems more closely -- I had lately ... Read More
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