Stevens, Wallace, 1879–1955, American poet, b. Reading, Pa., educated at Harvard and New York Law School. After 1916 he was associated with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, and from 1934 until his death he served as its vice president. A master of exquisite verse, Stevens was specifically concerned with creating some shape of order in the "slovenly wilderness" of chaos. These ideas are expressed in his earliest volume, Harmonium (1923), to which belongs the best known of his poems, "Sunday Morning." His ideas are developed in the subsequent volumes Ideas of Order (1936); The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937); Parts of the World (1942); Transport to Summer (1947), which includes the long poem "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction," in which Stevens elaborates on the poet's role in creating the fictions necessary to transform and harmonize the world; The Auroras of Autumn (1950); The Necessary Angel, essays (1951); Collected Poems (1954; Pulitzer Prize); and Opus Posthumous (1957).

Bibliography

See his Collected Poetry and Prose (1997), ed. by F. Kermode and J. Richardson; letters, ed. by H. Stevens (1966); biographies by H. Stevens (1977) and J. Richardson (2 vol., 1986–88); studies by H. Vendler (1969) and H. Bloom (1980).

Stevens, Wallace

Wallace Stevens, 1952.

(born Oct. 2, 1879, Reading, Pa., U.S.—died Aug. 2, 1955, Hartford, Conn.) U.S. poet. Stevens practiced law in New York City before joining an insurance firm in Hartford in 1916; he rose to vice president, a position he held until his death. His poems began appearing in literary magazines in 1914. In Harmonium (1923), his first and most verbally brilliant book, he introduced the theme that occupied his creative lifetime and unified his thought: the relationship between imagination and reality. His later poetry, in collections such as Ideas of Order (1936), The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), and The Auroras of Autumn (1950), continued to explore this theme with greater depth and rigour. Not until his late years was he widely read or recognized as a major poet by more than a few; he received a Pulitzer Prize only with his Collected Poems in 1955. He is now often considered one of America's greatest 20th-century poets.

Stevens, Wallace (1879–1955) poet, insurance executive; born in Reading, Pa. He took a special course at Harvard (1897–1900) and published some poems while there. He went to New York City to work as a journalist (1900–01) but didn't care for journalism and went to New York University Law School (1901–03). He practiced law in New York City (1904–16) and in 1916 joined the legal staff of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, with which he remained until his death (becoming a vice-president in 1934). While in New York City he had come to know many of the leading writers and artists, and he published his first poems as an adult in 1914, with "Sunday Morning" appearing in Poetry magazine in 1915. His verse play, "Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise," (1916) won a Poetry prize and was produced by New York's Provincetown Playhouse (1917). His first collection of poetry, Harmonium, was published in 1923, and though selling less than 100 copies, received some acclaim from fellow poets. More collections followed throughout the 1930s and 1940s, but not until the 1950s did he begin to receive wider recognition, reflected in literary awards, publication of his essays and addresses, and tributes to him as a major modern poet. After his death his influence on poets and serious readers of poetry only increased, for they found in the meticulous language and daring metaphors of such poems as "The Emperor of Ice Cream" and "The Man with the Blue Guitar"—decidedly difficult as they are—the creative imagination that allows humans to face the reality Stevens valued.