Harmonium

by Wallace Stevens

"There are in Harmonium six or eight of the most beautiful poems an American has written. The poems see, feel, and think with equal success." — Randall Jarrell, Poetry and The Age
An executive with a Connecticut-based insurance company, Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) wrote poetry in the evenings and during his daily commute. Harmonium, his first collection of verse, was published when he was 44 years old. Although largely overlooked upon its 1923 debut, the compilation is recognized today as an important contribution to Modernism, offering a diverse range of satirical and philosophical lyrical works that explore the nature of reality and the power of the imagination. They include some of Stevens's most famous and frequently studied works, including "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," and "Peter Quince at the Clavier." 

Genres: Poetry, American, Classics, Philosophy, 20th Century, The United States Of America, Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

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.