An episode from 2/19/24: Tonight, I read eleven essential poems by the American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). All of them can be found in his Collected Poems. I also read from his letters, and the essay about Stevens at The Poetry Foundation. The poems are:
- Anecdote of the Jar
- The Snow Man
- Six Significant Landscapes
- Anecdote of Men by the Thousand
- How to Live. What to Do
- Gallant Château
- Bouquet of Belle Scavoir
- The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain
- The Planet on the Table
- Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
- The Idea of Order at Key West (read by Stevens)
The biographies of Stevens that I mention are the two-volumes by Joan Richardson, and The Whole of Harmonium, by Paul Mariani. The 1988 documentary on Stevens, part of the Voices and Visions series, is also a great introduction.
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I’ve also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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