Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and he spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.
Some of his best-known poems include "Valley Candle", "Anecdote of the Jar", "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Sunday Morning", "The Snow Man", and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
Read more about Wallace Stevens: Poetry
Famous quotes by wallace stevens:
“Lantern without a bearer, you drift,
You, too, are drifting, in spite of your course;
Unless in the darkness, brightly-crowned,
You are the will, if there is a will,
Or the portent of a will that was,
One of the portents of the will that was.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“These days of disinheritance, we feast
On human heads. True, birds rebuild
Old nests and there is blue in the woods.
The church bells clap one night in the week.
But that’s all done. It is what used to be....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ‘The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.’”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“‘The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth....’”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Finally, in the last year of her age,
Having attained a present blessedness,
She said poetry and apotheosis are one.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)