Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens

The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens

Mariani, Paul

Paperback

Literary FiguresLiterary Criticism

Publisher Price: $20.00

ISBN10: 1451624387
ISBN13: 9781451624380
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: Apr 4 2017
Pages: 504
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
An incandescent....redefining biography of a major poet whose reputation continues to ascend (Booklist, starred review)--Wallace Stevens, perhaps the most important American poet of the twentieth century.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) lived a richly imaginative life that he expressed in his poems. A biography that is both deliciously readable and profoundly knowledgeable (Library Journal, starred review), The Whole Harmonium presents Stevens within the living context of his times and as the creator of a poetry that continues to shape how we understand and define ourselves.

A lawyer who rose to become an insurance-company vice president, Stevens composed brilliant poems on long walks to work and at other stolen moments. He endured an increasingly unhappy marriage, and yet he had his Dionysian side, reveling in long fishing (and drinking) trips to the sun-drenched tropics of Key West. He was at once both the Connecticut businessman and the hidalgo lover of all things Latin. His first book of poems, Harmonium, published when he was forty-four, drew on his profound understanding of Modernism to create a distinctive and inimitable American idiom. Over time he became acquainted with peers such as Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, but his personal style remained unique.

The complexity of Stevens's poetry rests on emotional, philosophical, and linguistic tensions that thread their way intricately through his poems, both early and late. And while he can be challenging to understand, Stevens has proven time and again to be one of the most richly rewarding poets to read. Biographer and poet Paul Mariani's The Whole Harmonium is an excellent, superb, thrilling story of a mind....unpacking poems in language that is nearly as eloquent as the poet's, and as clear as faithfulness allows (The New Yorker).

Also in

Literary Figures

View All