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"'One of the most considerable poets of the last hundred years... Poems that are as distinguished as any written this century.' Thom Gunn, London Magazine"
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This collection of the work of one of the greatest modern poets was first published in America in 1954. The Collected Poems was prepared by Stevens himself, shortly before his death, and contains all of his published books of poetry, covering more than four decades: from the brilliant rococo lyrics of Harmonium, through the large-scale orchestrations of his middle years, to the magnificent austere lyrics of 'The Rock', which first appeared in the Collected Poems, Stevens's poetry meditated unremittingly upon the relation between the world and the imagination.
'He seems to me - and sems to my readers, I am sure - one of the true poets of our century, someone whom the world will keep on reading just as it keeps on listening to Vivaldi or Scarlatti, looking at Tiepolo or Poussin. His best poems are the poetry of a man fully human - of someone sympathetic, magnanimous, both brightly and deeply intelligent; the poems see, feel, and think with equal success; they treat with mastery that part of existence which allows of mastery, and experience the rest of it with awe or sadness or delight.' - Randall Jarrell, Poetry and the Age
'One of the most considerable poets of the last hundred years...Poems that are as distinguished as any written in this century.' - Thom Gunn, London Magazine
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Wallace Stevens deserves a lot higher profile in England than he currently enjoys as his early poetry and later work are as good as the English language can get. Try 'Sunday Morning', 'The Idea of Order at Key West', 'Anecdote of the Jar', 'The Poem That Took The Place of a Mountain' and 'To an Old Philosopher in Rome' as tasters. Despite the five stars I've given here, though, beware the turgid and laboured mid-period where WS lost his muse and spent a lot of time straining to produce what came so brilliantly before and after. American academics will tell you, for example, that 'Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction' is a great poem, which its ace title suggests. I, on the other hand, would warn you to steer clear of what is a boring, obscure and overlong concoction of pretentious twaddle. But as for the titles I've mentioned, and others early and late, even Shakespeare would have to flourish a quill in admiration at what is quite simply stunningly good poetry.
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23 reviews
51 of 52 people found the following review helpful
This is OK but there are better Stevens Collections
5 May 2006
Format:Paperback
This collection lacks 22 poems which appeared in "The Palm at the End of the Mind", Holly Stevens carefully edited selection highly approved of by Harold Bloom. Missing are "Of Mere Being", "A Child Asleep in Its Own Life" and "For an Old Woman in a Wig" to name but three. It leaves out the added lines of "The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad". It lacks an index of first lines. If you're going to buy a book of Stevens' poems spend the extra $10 and get the magnificent Library of America "Collected Poetry and Prose" which contains EVERYTHING, is a huge bargain and will keep you occupied for the rest of your life. Or possibly get Holly Stevens "The Palm at the End of the Mind" which eliminates a lot of lesser poems which could confuse a newcomer to Stevens. The Vintage people have thrown this together without much thought. It's better than nothing, but the other two books I have named are the one's to get.
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
A poet's eye
18 Nov 2004
Format:Paperback
"Her terrace was the sand/And the palms and the twilight" -- and those are only the first two lines. Dipping into surrealism and imbued with spirituality, his poetry is compiled into "The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens," which includes seven compilations of his work.
Over his lifetime, Stevens wrote several books of poetry, but his exquisite poems are best taken by themselves: the lush grandeur of "Sunday Morning," the hymnlike "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle," and the humid grittiness of "O Florida, Venereal Soil." He takes multiple looks at "Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird," and the lush "Six Significant Landscapes."
In other poems, Stevens dips into outright surrealism, like in the delicate "Tattoo" ("There are filaments of your eyes/On the surface of the water/And in the edges of the snow"), and also adds a meditative bent into "The Snow Man" ("For the listener, who listens in the snow,/And, nothing himself, beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is").
If nothing else, Stevens' poetry can be read just because it is exquisitely beautiful. He lavished details all over almost every poem he wrote, and gave many of them the quality of a dream. His descriptions are simply written, but brilliantly laid out: "When my dream was near the moon,/The white folds of its gown/Filled with yellow light."
His style tends to be a bit on the ornate side -- Stevens freely uses the more exotic terms -- such as "opalescence," "pendentives" and "muleteers" -- wrapped up in complex verse, sometimes with a rhyme scheme and sometimes free-form. And lush detail is added to many of his poems, with descriptions of the moon, sun, plants and lighting, along with dazzling descriptions of the colors.
But his writing is more than beautiful. Stevens' work often poses questions about death, life, religion, and art, taking the conventional and turning it on its head. His belief in the importance of his art is reflected in poems like "Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself," which ends with the portentous lines: "Surrounded by its choral rings,/Still far away. It was like/A new knowledge of reality."
Wallace Stevens is one of the most unique poets of the 20th century, and the sprawling "Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens" is a wonderful read.
Over his lifetime, Stevens wrote several books of poetry, but his exquisite poems are best taken by themselves: the lush grandeur of "Sunday Morning," the hymnlike "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle," and the humid grittiness of "O Florida, Venereal Soil." He takes multiple looks at "Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird," and the lush "Six Significant Landscapes."
In other poems, Stevens dips into outright surrealism, like in the delicate "Tattoo" ("There are filaments of your eyes/On the surface of the water/And in the edges of the snow"), and also adds a meditative bent into "The Snow Man" ("For the listener, who listens in the snow,/And, nothing himself, beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is").
If nothing else, Stevens' poetry can be read just because it is exquisitely beautiful. He lavished details all over almost every poem he wrote, and gave many of them the quality of a dream. His descriptions are simply written, but brilliantly laid out: "When my dream was near the moon,/The white folds of its gown/Filled with yellow light."
His style tends to be a bit on the ornate side -- Stevens freely uses the more exotic terms -- such as "opalescence," "pendentives" and "muleteers" -- wrapped up in complex verse, sometimes with a rhyme scheme and sometimes free-form. And lush detail is added to many of his poems, with descriptions of the moon, sun, plants and lighting, along with dazzling descriptions of the colors.
But his writing is more than beautiful. Stevens' work often poses questions about death, life, religion, and art, taking the conventional and turning it on its head. His belief in the importance of his art is reflected in poems like "Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself," which ends with the portentous lines: "Surrounded by its choral rings,/Still far away. It was like/A new knowledge of reality."
Wallace Stevens is one of the most unique poets of the 20th century, and the sprawling "Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens" is a wonderful read.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
The Intensest Rendez-vous...
21 Jan 2000
Format:Paperback
Stevens is a quirky and imaginative poet with a taste for unusual diction, a fluidity of ideas and an unerring instinct for the haunting and intriguing. The poems are meditational in their completeness and memorability and present a more delightful and pleasurable style of Modernism than the other 'greats' of the period such as T S Eliot or Ezra Pound. His attempts to create a 'Supreme Fiction' can at times be baffling, but there is a richness of pure self-indulgence in the poetry which means that it is immediately compulsive and a book which several of my friends agree is 'essential' to any poetry collection, whether its concern be with Poetry at its literary finest or with the langorous pleasure of 'the green freedom of a cockatoo...'and inspirational dream-like meditations. Treat yourself!
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