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:
“He is what he hears and sees and if,
Without pathos, he feels what he hears
And sees, being nothing otherwise, he has not
To go to the Louvre to behold himself.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“How full of trifles everything is! It is only one’s thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Poet, be seated at the piano.
Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,
Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,
Its envious cachinnation.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“On a few words of what is real in the world
I nourish myself. I defend myself against
Whatever remains.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“In the land of turkeys in turkey weather
At the base of the statue, we go round and round.
What a beautiful history, beautiful surprise!
Monsieur is on horseback. The horse is covered with mice.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)