Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things

by James Longenbach

Wallace Stevens the poet and Wallace Stevens the insurance for more than one critical generation it has seemed as if these two men were unacquainted--that Stevens was a poet who existed only in the rarefied world of language. However, the idea that Stevens lived a double life, the author maintains, is misleading. This compelling book uncovers what Stevens liked to think of as his "ordinary" life, a life in which the demands of politics, economics, poetry, and everyday distractions coexisted, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not. Examining the full scope of Stevens's career (from the student-poet of the nineteenth century to the award-winning poet of the Cold War years), Longenbach reveals that Stevens was not only aware of events taking place around him, but often inspired by those events. The major achievements of Stevens's career are shown to coalesce around the major historical events of his lifetime (the Great Depression and two World Wars); but Longenbach also
dwells on Stevens's two extended periods of poetic silence, exploring the crucial aspects of Steven's life that were not exclusively poetic. Longenbach demonstrates that through Stevens's work in surety law he was far more intimately acquainted with legal and economic concerns than most poets, and he consequently thought deeply about the strengths--and, equally important, the limitations--of poetry as a social product and force.

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

James Longenbach is a poet and critic whose work is often featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Slate. He lives in Rochester, New York.

Reviews

[J. Alfred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good strong academic writing on one of the most interestingly un-Romanic of our poets. Longenbach pays particular attention to Stevens' political involvement, following his career throughout its various phases in a good mix of biography, historical context, and textual involvement.