Wallace Stevens Quick Facts

Wallace Stevens was a major American poet of the 20^th Century and an important member of the modernist movement in poetry.

Profile

• Birth Name: Wallace Stevens
• Pseudonym: Peter Parasol
• Date of Birth: October 2, 1879
• Place of Birth: Reading, Pennsylvania, United States of America
• Zodiac Sign: Libra
• Date of Death: August 2, 1955
• Height: 6 ft 2 in
• Died at Age: 75
• Place of Death: Hartford, Connecticut, United States of America
• Place of Burial: Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut, United States of America
• Cause of Death: Stomach Cancer
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: American
• Father: Garrett Barcalow Stevens (1848-1911)
• Mother: Margaretha Catharine Zeller (1850-1912)
• Siblings:

1. Eldest Brother: Garrett Barcalow Stevens (1877-1937)
2. Younger Brother: John Bergen Stevens (1880-1940)
3. Younger Sister: Elizabeth (Stevens) McFarland (1885-1943)
4. Youngest Sister: Mary Catharine Stevens (1889-1919)

• Spouse: Elsie Viola (Moll) Stevens (m. 1909–1955)(b. 1886–d. 1963)

• Children:

1. Daughter: Holly Bright Stevens (1924–1992)

• Alma Mater: Harvard University, New York Law School
• Wallace Stevens is known for: (a) contrasting the harshness of modern industrialized life with the magnificence of nature (b)employing  superior diction and dignified rhythms.
• Wallace Stevens is criticized for: being too abstract and philosophical.
• Wallace Stevens was influenced by: Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jules Laforgue, and Walt Whitman.
• Wallace Stevens’ works inspired: James Merrill, Donald Justice, John Ashbery, Mark Strand, and John Hollander.
• Literary Movement: Modernism
• Awards:

1. Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1949)
2. National Book Award for Poetry (1951, 1955)
3. Frost Medal (1951)
4. Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1955)

Quotes

"Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.”
- Steven Wallace, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Major Works

Poetry

• Harmonium (1923)
• Ideas of Order (1936)
• Owl's Clover (1936)
• The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937)
• Parts of a World (1942)
• Transport to Summer (1947)
• Auroras of Autumn (1950)
• Collected Poems (1954)
• Opus Posthumous (1957)
• The Palm at the End of the Mind (1972)
• Collected Poetry and Prose (1997)

Prose

• The Necessary Angel (essays) (1951)
• Letters of Wallace Stevens, edited by Holly Stevens (1966)

Did You Know?

• Stevens was the second of five children born to Garrett Barcalow Stevens, a successful lawyer and Margaretha Catharine Zeller, a former school teacher.
• It took him seven years to complete his first book of poetry, Harmonium which was published in 1923.
• Although Harmonium is now considered as a seminal work in modern poetry, the volume of its sale was insignificant.
• During his early twenties, he had a short love affair with Sybil Gage Weddle, a beautiful and intellectual young lady with pleasing personality. She is a woman who he memorized for the rest of the life.
• He espoused Elsie Kachel, a beautiful, lower class, ill-educated, and intellectually apathetic woman against his family’s approval. None from his family attended the wedding.
• After encountering opposition against his marriage, Stevens ceased speaking to his father for the rest of his life.
• The marriage was unhappy as Elsie gradually created a gulf between herself and Stevens after the birth of Holly, their only daughter. The couple, however, never divorced.
• Holly edited her father's letters which was published as Letters of Wallace Stevens in 1966.
• His 1954 book, Collected Poems won both a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
• Despite being a contemporary of modernist poets, such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams, Wallace never joined the intellectual circle.
• Stevens enrolled in Harvard as an undergraduate student in 1897 but left the university in 1900 without accomplishing a degree.
• He graduated in law in 1903 from New York Law School and was admitted to the U.S. Bar in 1904.
• He practiced law in different law firms until 1916.
• In 1916, Stevens took a position at Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company.  In 1932 he was appointed Vice President of the company and served there until his demise.
• Wallace Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955, the year of his death.

Media Gallery