Picture of Wallace Stevens.

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens is prob­a­bly my favorite English lan­guage poet. His ele­gance, elo­quence, and word­smithi­ness shine above all oth­ers for me. He had wit and whimsy, along with a deep sad­ness and melan­choly cours­ing through his poetry. A some­times strange com­bi­na­tion that worked, that merged sound and sense bet­ter than any other poet in English to my mind.

The Magritte of poets, Stevens worked for an insur­ance com­pany, the Hartford, ris­ing even­tu­ally to VP. Most, if not all of his cowork­ers knew noth­ing of his genius for poetry until after his death.

Here is a read­ing by Wallace Stevens of The Idea of Order at Key West.

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