The Necessary Angel

by STEVENS, WALLACE

• ISBN13: 9780394702780
• ISBN10: 0394702786
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1965-02-12
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

In this collection of essays, consummate poet Wallace Stevens reflects upon his art. His aim is not to produce a work of criticism or philosophy, or a mere discussion of poetic technique. As he explains in his introduction, his ambition in these various pieces, published in different times and places, aimed higher than that, in the direction of disclosing "poetry itself, the naked poem, the imagination manifesting itself in its domination of words." Stevens proves himself as eloquent and scintillating in prose as in poetry, as he both analyzes and demonstrates the essential act of repossessing reality through the imagination.

Author Biography

Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879, and died in Hartford, Connecticut, on August 2, 1955.  Although he had contributed to the <b>Harvard Advocate</b> while in college, he began to gain general recognition only when Harriet Monroe included four of his poems in a sepcial 1914 wartime issue of <b>Poetry</b>.  <b>Harmonium</b>, his first volume of poems, was published in 1923, and was followed by <b>Ideas of Order</b> (1936), <b>The Man with the Blue Guitar</b> (1937), <b>Parts of a World</b> (1942), <b>Transport to Summer</b> (1947), <b>The Auroras of Autumn</b> (1950), <b>The Necessary Angel</b> (a volume of essays, 1951), <b>The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens</b> (1954), and <b>Opus Posthumous</b> (first p

Table of Contents

I. The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words

II. The Figure of the Youth as Noble Poet

III. Three Academic Pieces

IV. About One of Marianne Moore's Poems

V. Effects of Analogy

VI. Imagination as Value

VII. The Relations between Poetry and Painting