The Poems of Mr. Wallace Stevens

【Abstract】This paper will make an effort to introduce Wallace Stevens ,as innovators especially his unconventional techniques.

【Key words】Wallace Stevens; Poems

【作者簡介】侯洪革，男，内蒙古科技大学外国语学院，副教授，硕士，研究方向：英语语言文学。

Wallace Stevens , a very famous modernist poet, is known for a best and most representative poet in the 20th century. His poem collection “Harmonium”,  had gained much concern since its publication because his original style of combining words and his curious ironic imagination, that is why Americans are so impressed by a poet.

As for the former, his gift is baffling and fantastic but sure, even when you do not know what he is saying. As for the latter, if you only read a few lines in his poems, youll get the impression from the richness of his verbal imagination. He is so observant and displays so distinguished a fancy, seems to possess emotion neither in abundance nor in intensity. Unfortunately, he didnt win the wide recognition until his death in 1955. His well known poems include The Snow Man (1921) Ideas of Order (1936)Owls Clover (1936) The Man with the Blue Guitar ( 1937) and The Auroras of Autumn (1950), among which numerous readers hail his The Snow Man as his masterpiece. It is in this poem that provides an opportunity to probe into the philosophy of life. Throughout his poem, a wide emptiness over his struggle of life can be felt: And, nothing himself, beholds. Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Also beneath his common description lurks a eagerness to break forth at any time, contrasted with the coldness in the winter snow.

He embodied the supreme ability to explore the reality, that is, through him, the reality can be categorized into: the objective reality and subjective reality. Back of Wallace Stevens is the notion that he was faithful to nothingness in reality. Through his poems, he mapped out an entire world,so his works will be always remembered for the reality, circumstances and meanings they reflect.

As a clerk in insurance company and far away the literary world, he wrote the poems which are his most wonderful and original contribution to poem. His exploration leads to the dualism between concrete reality and the human imagination.  He also has reputations as innovators because his technique is conventional. His influence still comes back to us readers a century later. Some people even think his poems can sustain comparison with Walt Whitmans.Yet it is not all completely different, these two great writers have much in common,both of whom represent the strengths of two creative currents. Although he had little literary training but a very sure poetic instint, so many of his finest work has always been heard all the time.

The poems which Wallace wrote during his late years especially the time near the very end of his life are regarded his most wonderful and original contribution to American poetry. His exploration of the significance of life had left a deep impression on his readers. The good poet, in this as in any other style ,is one who can create a work that has completeness and significance outside himself.

The dictum that the style is the man is well known. We can read every word, every line that Mr. Wallace Stevens wrote with much delight,for he had meaningful, far-reaching sense,ever-lasting charm and uncomparable style. Of course here, all these are the truest marks of distinction.

Though he was always far away from the literary circle, he still developped an extremely delicate and original style. His gift, reverberated beyond poetry, influcing modern literature, even culture from poetry to other areas. It is believed that his influence will increase dramatically with the time going on, and his reputation will continue to rise.

Some times people are apt to relate Mr. Wallace Stevens to the Frence symbolist school, as a result, readers will still find a lot of space in the exploration of the influence of symbolism especially in the 1920s and 1930s.Even he was remembered as an American symbolist. The tendency could be found here and there in his poems, that is , to present the metaphors without mentioning the subject the subject that inspireed them, to suggest it to the readers.