The Rock

by Wallace Stevens

The additional twenty-five new poems Stevens added to The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens.

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Wallace Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came at a fairly advanced age. His first major publication (four poems from a sequence entitled "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry Magazine) was written at the age of thirty-five, although as an undergraduate at Harvard, Stevens had written poetry and exchanged sonnets with George Santayana, with whom he was close through much of his life. Many of his canonical works were written well after he turned fifty. According to the literary critic Harold Bloom, who called Stevens the "best and most representative" American poet of the time, no Western writer since Sophocles has had such a late flowering of artistic genius.

Stevens attended Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School, graduating in 1903. On a trip back to Reading in 1904 Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel; after a long courtship, he married her in 1909. In 1913, the young couple rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who made a bust of Elsie.
A daughter, Holly, was born in 1924. She later edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems.

After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired on January 13, 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become the vice-president of the New York Office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in 1916, he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in Hartford, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a sign of meaning in the meaningless,

I found this more an encore than an epilogue, much less an epiphany. Slight and weary it might be, this collection jarred me, a recurring squeak repeats now with every stride. I’m afraid I’m obligated to both listen and follow.

[Adrián Viéitez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es un conjunto de poemas impecable, con elasticidad suficiente para abarcar desde lo que podríamos considerar un sentido clásico de la épica hasta una pequeña incursión en el cancionero popular. En lo estilístico predomina la tensión entre su hondura filosófica y la simpleza plástica de sus imágenes, que con frecuencia implican al individuo y su contexto en un amago moribundo de eternidad.

El lenguaje se encuentra atrapado en sus propios términos en muchos poemas, trazando recorridos autorreflexivos hasta dar con una puerta al exterior, con un señuelo del mundo; uno de los infinitos espejos posibles de la piedra.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

wallace's last contribution it's a minor collection of about 25 poems. he feels tired but he's sharp nonetheless he goes goes goes when he needs to and as with Auroras or Summer there's a theological weight too

No doubt we live beyond ourselves in air,

In an element that does not do for us,
So well, that which we do for ourselves, too big,
A thing not planned for imagery or belief,

Not one of the masculine myths we used to make,
A transparency through which the swallow weaves,
Without any form or any sense of form,

What we know in what we see, what we feel in what
We hear, what we are, beyond mystic disputation,
In the tumult of integrations out of the sky

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sólo puedo decir que me ha hecho gritar. Malinterpretad con alevosía y nocturnidad a vuestro antojo.

«Ya ni siquiera quedan nuestras sombras, sus sombras.
Las vidas que vivieron en la mente están ya terminadas.
Nunca estuvieron...Los sonidos de la guitarra
no estuvieron ni están. Absurdo. Las palabras dichas
no estuvieron ni están. Es para no creerlo.»

[Descending Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

His last volume of poetry and some of his best. Highlights ~ "The Green Plant" "The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain" "The World as Meditation" "Long And Sluggish Lines" "A Quiet Normal Life" "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour" "The Rock" "St Armorer's Church Seen from the Outside" "Note on Moonlight" "The Planet On The Table" and "The River Of Rivers In Connecticut".

[Burnside Soleil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Stevens’ unacknowledged masterpiece.

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm convinced that this is really good and Wallace Stevens is simply smarter than me.

[JUANAN]

"A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition/ In a repetitiousness of men and flies." (The plain sense of things)

"Those that are left are the unaccomplished,/ The finally human,/ Natives of a dwindled sphere./ [...] Each person completely touches us/ With what he is and as he is,/ In the stale grandeur of annihilation." (Lebensweisheitspielerei)

"Out of this same light, out of the central mind,/ We make a dwelling in the evening air,/ In which being there together is enough." (Final soliloquy of the interior paramour)

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stevens’ final poetic set represents a sort of culmination of his artistic vision and journey but one that - by its necessity - cannot reach a satisfying conclusion.

[Trever Polak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Same problem as Stevens's other late works—he became disconneted from his poetic talents and leaned too far into ideas.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

saw my lib card number neighbour have this on hold so I copied them <3

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tired and a bit mawkish.