Wallace Stevens

In the essay “Why Stevens Must Be Abstract,” Charles Altieri says “Stevens realized that the abstraction he desired on the level of content might be possible without the traps of ideology, if he could adapt to poetry the testimonial, self-referential dimension of art explored in painting. An art that enacts what it asserts can be said to finesse ideology, because its assertions do not depend on relating to the world through propositional, or even dramatic, chains of inference that have obvious dependencies on beliefs within a particular social order.” (Italics mine) (322).

Stevens’ movement toward adapting the testimonial, self-referential dimension of art in his poetry is apparent in comparison of his earliest and later work. His earliest poetry (pre-twentieth century) used a lyric style and content reflective of a Romantic/Humanist longing for organic unity seeking universal truth, described by Altieri as the ‘traps of ideology. His later poetry succeeds in finessing ideology, using abstraction and stylistic invention to depart from the universal and engage the reader in a modernist experience.

In this paper I will demonstrate an evolution in Stevens work toward a successful use of abstraction to ‘finesse ideology’ and create an art that enacts what it asserts. While this evolution can be seen throughout his work and applies to a multitude of themes, for the purposes of this paper I will focus on his use of seasonal and life cycle metaphor to engage the reader in the experience of the poem; the concept of negation as the point of emergence; and the use of structural techniques to enact the experience of negation and emergence in both form and content.

Stevens’ Assertion

It is important to identify the assertio...

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...pher. “The Moving Eye in Williams’ Earlier Poetry,” in William Carlos Williams: Man and Poet, Carroll F., Terrell (Ed.). (Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation) 1983.

Eeckhout, Bart. Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press) 2002.

Harel, Kay. “Again Is An Oxymoron,” in The Wallace Stevens Journal, 26, (Spring 2002).

Stevens, Wallace. Collected Poetry and Prose. Kermode, Frank (Ed.) and Richardson, Joan (Ed.). (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, Inc.) 1997.

Walsh, Thomas F. Concordance of the Poetry of Wallace Stevens. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press) 1963. Referenced in Eeckhout, Wallace Stevens and the Limits of Reading and Writing.

Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Agnes, Michael (Ed.) and Gurlanik, David B. (Ed.) (Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide) 2001.