A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens - Hardcover

Cook, Eleanor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691049831 ISBN 13: 9780691049830

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Wallace Stevens is one of the major poets of the twentieth century, and also among the most challenging. His poems can be dazzling in their verbal brilliance. They are often shot through with lavish imagery and wit, informed by a lawyer's logic, and disarmingly unexpected: a singing jackrabbit, the seductive Nanzia Nunzio. They also spoke--and still speak--to contemporary concerns. Though his work is popular and his readership continues to grow, many readers encountering it are baffled by such rich and strange poetry.

Eleanor Cook, a leading critic of poetry and expert on Stevens, gives us here the essential reader's guide to this important American poet. Cook goes through each of Stevens's poems in his six major collections as well as his later lyrics, in chronological order. For each poem she provides an introductory head note and a series of annotations on difficult phrases and references, illuminating for us just why and how Stevens was a master at his art. Her annotations, which include both previously unpublished scholarship and interpretive remarks, will benefit beginners and specialists alike. Cook also provides a brief biography of Stevens, and offers a detailed appendix on how to read modern poetry.

A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens is an indispensable resource and the perfect companion to The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, first published in 1954 in honor of Stevens's seventy-fifth birthday, as well as to the 1997 collection Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"It looks to be an invaluable companion for readers of a great poet whom many find difficult, although attractive. I am most happy to have this splendid book in my library--where it will be in use as often as on the shelf. And I shall certainly be recommending it to colleagues and friends."--Alastair Fowler, professor emeritus, University of Edinburgh

"This is a much-needed book that offers a comprehensive guide to the poetry of Wallace Stevens. For each poem, Cook offers a brief general comment, then a series of glosses on difficult phrases and obscure references. Both comments and glosses are by turns incisive, erudite, and witty, and often shed more light on the poems than much more drawn-out and elaborate commentaries. Cook's prose is elegantly spare and direct. Her guide allows at every point for multiple meanings and resonances."--Roger Gilbert, Cornell University

"New readers of Stevens must own this book, the ideal guide for starting out. . . . Cook's succinct summaries and annotations are confidently expert. . . . Long admired for her attention to syntactical word-play, Cook has a fine way here of describing meter as an aspect of form. . . . The book is littered with many . . . marvelous condensations. . . . The finest introductory close reading of 'The Man with the Blue Guitar' that has been published. . . . Although this book would seem to provide an atomized, poem-by-poem experience, its reader's greatest reward is the sense that he or she gets of the overall shape of the Stevensian project."--Al Filreis, University of Pennsylvania

About the Author

Eleanor Cook is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Toronto. Her books include Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, Against Coercion: Games Poets Play, and Poetry, Word-Play, and Word-War in Wallace Stevens (Princeton).

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0691049831
• ISBN 13: 9780691049830
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368