Guitar,’’ deepens its joyful possibility in ‘‘Notes
Toward a Supreme Fiction,’’ and strengthens its
existential power in ‘‘An Ordinary Evening in
New Haven’’ and ‘‘The Auroras of Autumn’’: an
everyday practice evident, for example, in the rou-
tine matins of ‘‘Song of Fixed Accord’’ (441) or the
habitual morning expectation of ‘‘The World as
Meditation’’ (441–42) or thesunlit ‘‘over and over’’
(449) of ‘‘St. Armorer’s Church from the Outside.’’
To trace Stevens’s use of everyday repetition is to
see why such works should seem so quietly fitting
as culmination to his art—and so serenely
adequate as preparation for his death. If ‘‘Poetry
is a response to the daily necessity of getting the
world right’’ (913), as Stevens writes in his ‘‘Ada-
gia,’’ an understanding of the daily deepens our
understanding of both his poetry and its necessity.
Source:Siobhan Phillips, ‘‘Wallace Stevens and the Mode
of the Ordinary,’’ inTwentieth Century Literature, Vol.
54, No. 1, Spring 2008, pp. 1–30.
Sources
Balbo, Ned, ‘‘Wallace Stevens and the Abstract,’’ inArt
Journal, Vol. 53, No. 1, Spring 1994, p. 97.
Bloom, Harold, ‘‘Wallace Stevens,’’ inGenius: A Mosaic of
One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds,WarnerBooks,
2002, pp. 364, 365.
Clippinger, David, ‘‘Wallace Stevens,’’ inDictionary of
Literary Biography,Vol.342,Twentieth-Century American
Nature Poets, edited by J. Scott Bryson and Roger
Thompson, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2008.
Miller, J. Hillis, ‘‘Wallace Stevens’ Poetry of Being,’’ inThe
Act of the Mind: Essays on the Poetry of Wallace Stevens,
edited by Roy Harvey Pearce and J. Hillis Miller, Johns
Hopkins Press, 1965, pp. 147, 151–52, 154, 160, 161.
———, ‘‘William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens,’’
in Columbia Literary History of the United States,
Columbia University Press, 1988, pp. 985–86, 991.
Perkins, David, ‘‘The Later Poetry of Wallace Stevens,’’
inA History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After,
Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 278, 279.
Stevens, Wallace, ‘‘Adagia,’’ inOpus Posthumous, edited
with an introduction by Samuel French Morse, Knopf,
1966, p. 159.
———, ‘‘Of Modern Poetry,’’ inThe Norton Anthology of
American Literature, Vol. D, 7th ed., edited by Nina
Baym, Norton, 2007, pp. 1453–54, originally published
inParts of a World, Knopf, 1942.
Wiman, Christian, ‘‘Influential Poets,’’ in Atlantic
Monthly, Vol. 298, No. 5, December 2006, p. 75.Further Reading
Burney, William,Wallace Stevens, Twayne, 1966.
Burney compares ‘‘Of Modern Poetry’’ to other
works in Stevens’s later period, which often
become meditations on the relationship between
poet, poem, and reader.
Doggett, Frank, and Robert Buttel, eds.,Wallace Stevens:
ACelebration, Princeton University Press, 1980.
This collection of essays examine Stevens’s
innovative style and themes. The essays also
address Stevens’s enduring stature.
Eeckhout, Bart,Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading
and Writing, University of Missouri Press, 2002.
Eeckhout discusses Stevens’s scholarly recep-
tion and the ideology that becomes the focal
point of his poetry.
Litz, A. Walton,Introspective Voyager: The Poetic Devel-
opment of Wallace Stevens, Oxford University Press, 1972.
In his study, Litz argues that Stevens’s poetry
connects readers with their personal as well as
their cultural experiences.
Sharpe, Tony,Wallace Stevens: A Literary Life, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2000.
Sharpe draws on Stevens’s journals and letters to
create a portrait of the poet, intending to show
how the poet’s experiences shaped his work.
Timberman Newcomb, John,Wallace Stevens and Liter-
ary Canons, University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
Newcomb explores how the form of Stevens’s
poetry relates to its themes, especially his focus
on the poet’s imaginative recreation of reality.Of Modern Poetry