Wallace Stevens

Date of Birth:

18-Oct-1879

Nationality:

United States

Profession:

Wallace Stevens was a lawyer by training and trade, but he went on to become one of the most influential American modernist poets. He ini-tially studied at Harvard and later on was employed as a journalist, be-fore going to New York Law School. Stevens may have been better known for his modernist poems but he worked full time for an insurance company located in the state of Connecticut and worked on his poetry in his spare time. He eventually ended up as the vice president of the insurance company. Some of his most famous poems are ‘The Snow Man’, ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’, ‘Anectode of the Jar’ and ‘The Emperor of the Ice Cream Jar’ among others. His book of Collected Poems won him the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1955 and remains a hugely popular book among poetry enthusiasts. According to those close to him, he supported the Republican Party but was not an active member of any political outfit. Stevens was a highly intelligent man, with a great sense of humour and hence it is not a surprise that he has left behind a treas-ure trove of quotes. Here are some of the very best.

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Wallace Stevens

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QUOTES BY Wallace Stevens

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.

I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendos The blackbird whistling Or just after.

Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.

Reality is a clich� from which we escape by metaphor.

The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.

We live in an old chaos of the sun.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.