Making The Poem: Stevens' Approaches

Over sixty years after his death, Wallace Stevens remains one of the major figures of American modernist poetry, celebrated for his masterful style, formal rigor, and aesthetic investigations of the natural, political, and metaphysical worlds. In Making the Poem, noted Stevens scholar George S. Lensing explores the poetÆs progress in the creation of his body of work, considering its development, composition, and reception. Drawing on little-known sources and nuanced readings of StevensÆ texts, Lensing expands the customary view of the poetÆs creative approaches. This wide-ranging study extends from the origins and overlapping themes of well-known poems through the social and political backgrounds that marked StevensÆ work to the prosodic and musical elements central to his style. Making the Poem features a dynamic new reading of the important early poem ôSea Surface Full of Cloudsöùviewing it alongside his wife ElsieÆs journal describing the sea voyage that inspired the poemùand an extensive, multiperspective treatment of the widely anthologized ôThe Idea of Order at Key West,ö as well as a careful excavation of the poem ôMozart, 1935ö in the context of the U.S. Great Depression. Lensing concludes with a discussion of the gradual (and sometimes reluctant) recognition StevensÆ work received from poets and critics in Great Britain and Ireland. Stemming from decades of research and writing, Making the Poem: StevensÆ Approaches presents a holistic view of his creative achievements and a wealth of new material for readers to draw upon in their future encounters with the poetry of Wallace Stevens.

• | Author: George S. Lensing
• | Publisher: Lsu Press
• | Publication Date: Jun 09, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 264 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/Literary Criticism
• | ISBN-10: 0807168947
• | ISBN-13: 9780807168943