Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-55tpx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-08T13:31:36.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 14 - Poetic Thinking

from Part III - Revisionary Readings of Stevens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2021

Bart Eeckhout
Affiliation:
Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium
Gül Bilge Han
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

Altieri’s chapter defines four basic modes of thinking in Wallace Stevens’s poetry. Harmonium (1923) reconceives what poetic thinking can be—from an ideal of cogent masculine argument to the possibility of thinking against generalization. Such thinking offers allegories that fascinate without resolving. And it shifts the sensuality of poetry from an emphasis on referring to sensuous detail to a lyric sensuality that is basic to the forms of concreteness established by the workings of the medium. Second, Stevens turns in Ideas of Order (1936) from valuing the eccentric to imagining how poetic thinking can become central to ordinary life. Third, by the final poems of Transport to Summer (1947), Stevens seems to become embarrassed by his own rhetoric of the hero and major man. He becomes increasingly concerned with blending the unreal of fiction with the work of realization, a concept strikingly parallel to Paul Cézanne’s idea of how art brings force and vitality to nature. Finally, that theoretical concern for blending fictionality with realization generates in The Rock (1954) a mode of poetic thinking inseparable from a sense of self-conscious dwelling that enables us to value the artifice present in even the most elemental of experiences.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Altieri, Charles. Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity: Toward a Phenomenology of Value. Cornell UP, 2013.Google Scholar
Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. Princeton UP, 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Critchley, Simon. Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens. Routledge, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lensing, George S. Making the Poem: Stevens’ Approaches. Louisiana State UP, 2018.Google Scholar
Ragg, Edward. Wallace Stevens and the Aesthetics of Abstraction. Cambridge UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Stevens, Holly. Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens. Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.Google Scholar
Stevens, Wallace. Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose. Edited by Kermode, Frank and Richardson, Joan, Library of America, 1997.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×