from The Necessary Angel, Essays on Reality and the Imagination ,1942) In his poems we see what Stevens called “the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality.” Poetry, imagination, he wrote “the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.” (“The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words” last para. Throughout his career as a poet he explored, and questioned, the function and uses of poetry in the face of world disorder, seeking, and, as he wrote in the last line of his last poem, “Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself,” perhaps finding “A new knowledge of reality”. Stevens’ life was shaped by two World Wars and the Great Depression. Here, offered in tribute to James Longenbach on this one year anniversary of his death, is a look at three poems of summer by Wallace Stevens. Yeats, Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, including The Plain Sense of Things, (Oxford University Press,1991) an in-depth study of Stevens. His later work focused on contemporary poets, but his earlier critical studies were of W.B. James Longenbach (1959-2022) a beloved member of our community, distinguished scholar, critic, teacher and poet, he was the author of many books of poetry and literary criticism.
A Tribute to James Longenbach through the poetry of Wallace Stevens:
0 kommentar(er)
