Wallace Stevens (1879 -1955 )

Wallace Stevens (1879 -1955 )

Wallace Stevens' first book of poems entitled "Harmonium" appeared in 1923. In his early poetry, he made a lavish use of big, high-sounding unusual and

Exotic words but in later stages, he composed mature poetry with a high degree. His mature stage is characterized by terseness, compactness, condensations of ideas, and an economy in the use of words. His themes, poetic style and concept of poetry mark him different from the past and contemporary poets.

Following are the characteristics of his poetry:-

1 – Themes in his poetry:

a ) The Reality-Imagination complex:

the major theme of his poetry is reality and imagination conflict. In much of his poems, he dwells upon this theme. "The Man with the Blue Guitar" is the most outstanding poem in which he dealt this theme. His entire poetic work is the record of an endless dialogue between imagination and reality which occupied his mind all his life.

b ) The human perception of Reality :-

another theme in Stevens' poetry is the changing nature of human perception. He says our perception of things are bound to vary from time to time, depending upon the circumstances and the situation. "Thirteen ways of looking at a Blackbird" and other poems are the good examples of this theme.

c ) The influence of Art:

One of his themes is the influence of art upon a human's view of things in this world. In his view, the work of art has some mysterious influence upon the surroundings and can create some kind of order in a chaotic situation.

D ) Religious and Political themes:-

Religion is an important issue in Stevens' poetry. He rejects the traditional or orthodox teaching of religion. He wrote a few political poems in which he expressed his views about communism or Marxism.



2 – Stevens' concept of poetry:-

He explains his concept of poetry in some long poems and short poems like "The poem of our climate" and of modern poetry. He points out that social conditions and ideas have undergone vast changes so poet's out look must also change. The Modern poet cannot afford to cling to the past conventions and modes of writing poetry. The modern poet must come into a close contact with the men, and more particularly with the women, of that time, and should not shut his eyes to war.

3 – Stevens' poetic style and diction:-

There is a difference of style in his early and later poetry. His poetic style somewhere lyrical with little emotional intensity and sometimes highly emotional with obscurity of language. The later poems are more abstract than the earlier poems. His later poems are pile of analogies. "Domination of Black" has multiple analogy and a masterpiece of imagist practice. His poetry has an abundance of recurrent imagery. For example, the color "blue" in his poetry represents imagination, "red" represents the power of reality and "green" symbolizes the fertility of nature. Some of his poems are anecdotes all dramatize some abstraction.

Many of his poems reflect his sense of humor, irony, satire and metaphors pervades his entire poetry. His use of metaphor is linked to his symbolism. He is also a master of the art of personification. His image of the sun as "that giant glistening on the horizon" has become famous.

Stevens has the quality of romantics poets, imagist poets, and modern poets like T.S.Eliot. he writes his own kind of poetry and he employs his own kind of style. He stands alone, and is not integral part of any past or contemporary movement.

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