Wallace Stevens
The poet Wallace Stevens is said to have been baptized a Catholic during his last days suffering from stomach cancer. This account is disputed, particularly by Stevens's daughter, Holly, and critic, Helen Vendler, who, in a letter to James Wm. Chichetto, thought Fr. Arthur Hanley was "forgetful" since "he was interviewed twenty years after Stevens' death." In his response, Chichetto noted that Vendler ignored "the testimony of Dr. Edward Sennett (in charge of the Radiology Dept. at St. Francis Hospital when Stevens was admitted both times) and the Sisters with whom he talked in 1977 (and later) who believed Fr. Hanley's account."
Read more about this topic: Deathbed Conversion, Suggested Deathbed Conversions
Famous quotes by wallace stevens:
“‘I have said no
To everything, in order to get at myself.
I have wiped away moonlight like mud....’”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The wind had seized the tree and ha, and ha,
It held the shivering, the shaken limbs,
Then bathed its body in the leaping lake.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The soul, he said, is composed
Of the external world.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“And what’s above is in the past
As sure as all the angels are.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)