Books : Wallace Stevens : Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America)
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by: Wallace Stevens, Frank Kermode
List Price: $40.00Amazon.com's Price: $26.40 You Save: $13.60 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.52
EAN: 9781883011451
ISBN: 1883011450
Label: Library of America
Manufacturer: Library of America
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 1030
Publication Date: October 01, 1997
Publisher: Library of America
Sales Rank: 155231
Studio: Library of America
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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.
Amazon.com Review:
Born in Pennsylvania in 1879, Wallace Stevens spent his adult life working in the rigorously non-poetic insurance business. Yet his poetry, most of which he wrote after his 50th birthday, is anything but mundane. Rather, Stevens stuffed his work with the brilliant bric-a-brac of a dozen cultures, celebrating (for example) the 'dark Brazilians in their cafes,/Musing immaculate, pampean dits' or the way 'that old Chinese/Sat tittivating by their mountain pools/Or in the Yangtse studied out their beards.' Stevens wasn't, however, a simple collector of souvenirs. A magpie with a mission, he used the peculiar music of his poetry to investigate grand philosophical dilemmas. What was the distinction between appearance and reality? Does an aesthetic artifact such as a poem bring us any closer to the real? (He seemed to answer the latter question, at least provisionally, by declaring that 'the poem is the cry of its occasion/Part of the res itself and not about it.') The Collected Poetry & Prose brings together all of Stevens's published books, including such classic poems as 'The Man with the Blue Guitar,' 'Sunday Morning,' and 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.' There's also a generous sampling of his essays, speeches, letters, and miscellaneous prose. These riches confirm the enormous reach of Stevens's imagination, but they also remind us that for all his internationalism, he remained very much a product of his native soil. As he confessed in a 1948 letter, 'I like to hold on to anything that seems to have a definite American past even though the American trees may be growing by the side of queer Parthenons set, say, in the neighborhood of Niagara Falls.'
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - 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.
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