Author Biography

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) is considered one of the greatest American poets of the last century. His major works include Ideas of Order, The Man With the Blue Guitar, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, and The Necessary Angel. He is the recipient of several awards, including The National Book Award for Poetry, the Frost Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Review

Praise for Wallace Stevens

"The best and most representative American poet." —Harold Bloom

"After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens could." —Robert Fitzgerald

"One might as well argue with the Evening Star and find fault with so much wit and grace and intelligence . . . such an overwhelming and exquisite command both of the worlds and of the rhythms of our language; such charm and irony, such natural and philosophical breadth of sympathy, such dignity and magnanimity." —Randall Jarrell

Long Description

In 1955, shortly before his death, Wallace Stevens earned the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens . The collection gathered most of his life's work, and featured 25 previously unpublished poems. Stevens imagined that those poems would stand alone as their own volume-- The Rock . Featuring some of his most memorable poems, including "Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself," The Rock is an excellent introduction to one of American's most brilliant beloved modernist poets. III Forms of the Rock in a Night-Hymn The rock is the gray particular of a man's life, The stone from which he rises, up--and--ho, The step to the bleaker depths of his descents . . . The rock is the stern particular of the air, The mirror of the planets, one by one, But through man's eye, their silent rhapsodist, Turquoise the rock, at odious evening bright With redness that sticks fast to evil dreams; The difficult rightness of half-risen day.

Review Quote

Praise for Wallace Stevens "The best and most representative American poet." --Harold Bloom "After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens could." --Robert Fitzgerald "One might as well argue with the Evening Star and find fault with so much wit and grace and intelligence . . . such an overwhelming and exquisite command both of the worlds and of the rhythms of our language; such charm and irony, such natural and philosophical breadth of sympathy, such dignity and magnanimity." --Randall Jarrell

Description for Sales People

The fourth book in the new Counterpoints series; Each palm-size book in the Counterpoints series is meant to stay with you, whether safely in your pocket or long after you turn the last page. From short stories to essays to poems, these little books celebrate our most-beloved writers, whose work encapsulates the spirit of Counterpoint Press: cutting-edge, wide-ranging, and independent.

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