Wallace Stevens: The Later Years, 1923-1955

by Joan Richardson

Uses Stevens' journals and letters, and the reminiscences of friends, family members and colleagues to recount the second half of the American poet's life

Genres: Biography, Poetry, Nonfiction

462 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Em]

[Rodney]

Vol. 1 centered on Stevens’s complex relationship with his wife, Elsie. With that resolved into separate bedrooms in a big house by Vol. 2, Richardson has little left to do but walk through Stevens’s correspondence, toting up awards and disappointments, giving the hero-worship implicit in the earlier volume full sway. Richardson’s Stevens succeeds at everything he ever wanted to do by middle age, fashioning himself into the sublime WASP Buddha dispensing metered wisdom for the ages. You’d think a self-image like that would make any sane biographer want to wobble the pedestal a bit, but not Richardson, who likes her Stevens just as he is in the carefully posed dust jacket photos.