Wallace Stevens

(October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955 / Pennsylvania / United States)

poet Wallace Stevens
#82 on top 500 poets

Wallace Stevens Quotes

  • ''What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Three Academic Pieces," no. 1, The Necessary Angel (first published 1947, repr. 1951).
    16 person liked.
    		7 person did not like.
  • ''The genuine artist is never "true to life." He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "On Poetic Truth," Opus Posthumous (1959).
    20 person liked.
    		8 person did not like.
  • ''To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Imagination as Value," The Necessary Angel (1949, repr. 1951).
    16 person liked.
    		8 person did not like.
  • ''Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Opus Posthumous, "Adagia," (1959).
    20 person liked.
    		9 person did not like.
  • ''One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Opus Posthumous, "Adagia," (1959).
    11 person liked.
    		7 person did not like.
  • ''Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery beaches.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Indian River."
    6 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. (Originally published 1951). Opus Posthumous, "Two or Three Ideas," (1959).
    7 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''One's ignorance is one's chief asset.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Opus Posthumous, "Adagia," (1959).
    6 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. Opus Posthumous, "Adagia," (1959).
    5 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.''
    Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. (Originally published 1944). "The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet," lecture, Aug. 1943, The Necessary Angel (1951).
    8 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.

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Best Poem of Wallace Stevens

Sunday Morning

1

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent ...

Read the full of Sunday Morning

Poem Written At Morning

A sunny day's complete Poussiniana
Divide it from itself. It is this or that
And it is not.
By metaphor you paint
A thing. Thus, the pineapple was a leather fruit,
A fruit for pewter, thorned and palmed and blue,
To be served by men of ice.
The senses paint
By metaphor. The juice was fragranter

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