Letters of Wallace Stevens - Softcover

Wallace Stevens

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520206681 ISBN 13: 9780520206687

Publisher: University of California Press, 1996

Synopsis

Long unavailable, now in paperback for the first time, these are the brilliant, subtle, illuminating letters of one of the great poets of the twentieth century. Stevens's famous criterion for poetry—"It should give pleasure"—informed his epistolary aesthetic as well; these letters stimulate one's appetite for poetry as they valorize the imagination and the senses. They also offer fascinating glimpses of Stevens as family man, insurance executive, connoisseur, and friend.

FROM THE BOOK:"Next to the passion flower I love fuchsias, and no kidding. . . . Down among the Pennsylvania Germans there was a race of young men . . . who carved willow fans. These men would take a bit of willow stick about a foot long, peel it and with nothing more than a jackknife carve it into something that looked like a souvenir of Queen Anne's lingerie. The trouble that someone took to invent fuchsias makes me think of these willow fans. However it is a dark and dreary day today and who am I to be frivolous under such circumstances."—from a letter to Wilson Taylor, August 20, 1947

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"These letters—nakedly honest, often deadpan, personally reserved, and intellectually informative—light up the poems and are themselves, in their exquisite and self-critical formulations, notable literary documents."—Helen Vendler, Harvard University

"The music is in the poems, but the letters are their own literature of a uniquely imaginative life."—Philip Booth

From the Back Cover:

"These letters (nakedly honest, often deadpan, personally reserved, and intellectually informative (light up the poems and are themselves, in their exquisite and self-critical formulations, notable literary documents." (Helen Vendler, Harvard University)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0520206681
• ISBN 13: 9780520206687
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 929
• Editor: Holly Stevens