Wallace Stevens: 11 Essential Poems

An episode from 2/19/24: Tonight, I read eleven essential poems by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). All of them can be found in his Collected Poems. I also read from his letters, and the essay about Stevens at The Poetry Foundation. The poems are:

• Anecdote of the Jar
• The Snow Man
• Six Significant Landscapes
• Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
• How to Live. What to Do
• Gallant Château
• Bouquet of Belle Scavoir
• The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain
• The Planet on the Table
• Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
• The Idea of Order at Key West (read by Stevens)

The biographies of Stevens that I mention are the two-volumes by Joan Richardson, and The Whole of Harmonium, by Paul Mariani. The 1988 documentary on Stevens, part of the Voices and Visions series, is also a great introduction.

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