Wallace Stevens

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

poet Wallace Stevens
#98 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).
    19 person liked.
    		9 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).
    23 person liked.
    		9 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).
    17 person liked.
    		9 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).
    22 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).
    15 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."
    7 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).
    8 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).
    7 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).
    6 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

The Emperor Of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its ...

Read the full of The Emperor Of Ice-Cream

Metaphors Of A Magnifico

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .

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