Links and Tools

Poems, Recordings, and Other Resources

• The Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens: a non-profit organization devoted to “preserving the literary arts and promoting the cultural legacy of Wallace Stevens.”
• Wallace Stevens at PennSound: all known recordings of Stevens reading his poetry.
• The Voices and Visions episode about Wallace Stevens: PBS documentary on Stevens now available at Annenberg Learner.
• Recording of Wallace Stevens reading “It Must Change”: introduced by Christina Davis, curator of the Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard University).
• Poetry Foundation webpage for Wallace Stevens: contains a short biography, poems, articles by and about Stevens, as well as audio material and podcasts.
• Academy of American Poets webpage for Wallace Stevens: contains a short biography and a selection of poems.
• The University of Illinois’ Modern American Poetry page for Wallace Stevens: contains passages from criticism about Stevens, as well as a short biography, excerpts from letters, and poems.
• “Uneven Stevens”: podcast for the London Review of Books by Mark Ford and Seamus Perry about Stevens’ work.
• “Contemporary Poets on Wallace Stevens: An Open Discussion”: video recording of a panel discussion at the Modern Language Association (2020), featuring the poets Kate Colby, Mónica de la Torre, Aldon Lynn Nielsen, and Tyrone Williams. The video can be accessed on YouTube here or the University of Pennsylvania website here.
• Discussion of “The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain” at the Modern Language Association (2020), by Kate Colby, Mónica de la Torre, Aldon Lynn Nielsen, and Tyrone Williams, available on the website of Jacket 2 as PoemTalk episode #152.
• Video of dedication ceremony for the Wallace Stevens Cultural Medallion. The plaque was dedicated on July 11, 2018 by the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center, and can be found in front of Stevens’s former residence at 441 W. 21 St., New York City.

Online Lectures about Wallace Stevens

• Marie Borroff at Open Yale Courses
• Al Filreis at the Kelly Writers House (University of Pennsylvania): Part 1 and Part 2
• Langdon Hammer at Open Yale Courses: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
• Susan Howe and Joan Richardson at the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination
• Helen Vendler at the Art Institute of Chicago
• Helen Vendler at the Stanford Humanities Center
• Helen Vendler at the Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard University)
• Excerpts from “Wallace Stevens, New York and Modernism” (Conference hosted by the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University)

Ronald Sukenick’s Wallace Stevens, Musing the Obscure: Readings, an Interpretation, and a Guide to the Collected Poetry (1967)

Originally published in 1967 by New York University, this indispensable guide to Wallace Stevens’s poetry is now available online.

Preface

A Stevens Chronology

Table of Contents

Abbreviations

I. Wallace Stevens: Theory and Practice

II. Readings

• “The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage”
• “Domination of Black”
• “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”
• “The Comedian as the Letter C”
• “On the Manner of Addressing Clouds”
• “Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb”
• “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”
• “Sunday Morning”
• “Bantams in Pine-Woods”
• “To the One of Fictive Music”
• “Peter Quince at the Clavier”
• “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
• “Anatomy of Monotony”
• “The Idea of Order at Key West”
• “Evening without Angels”
• “The Man with the Blue Guitar”
• “The Man on the Dump”
• “Connoisseur of Chaos”
• “The Sense of the Sleight-of-hand Man”
• “Of Modern Poetry”
• “Asides on the Oboe”
• “Extracts from Addresses to the Academy of Fine Ideas”
• “Dutch Graves in Bucks County”
• “No Possum, No Sop, No Taters”
• “So-and-So Reclining on Her Couch”
• “Esthétique du Mal”
• “Man Carrying Thing”
• “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction”
• “Large Red Man Reading”
• “The Solitude of Cataracts”
• “Saint John and the Back-Ache”
• “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven”
• “Angel Surrounded by Paysans”
• “The Plain Sense of Things”
• “Looking across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly”
• “Long and Sluggish Lines”
• “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour”
• “The Rock”
• “The River of Rivers in Connecticut”
• “The Course of a Particular”
• “Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination”
• “Solitaire under the Oaks”
• “Local Objects”
• “Artificial Populations”
• “A Clear Day and No Memories”
• “As You Leave the Room”
• “Of Mere Being”

III. “A Guide to Stevens’ Collected Poetry”

Visual Art Inspired by Wallace Stevens

• Joan Colbert’s “The Thirteen Ways” series: inspired by “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
• Oriole Feshbach’s “Luminations” series: inspired by “The Auroras of Autumn”
• David Hockney’s “The Blue Guitar” series: inspired by “The Man With the Blue Guitar”
• D.B. Johnson’s portrait of Wallace Stevens
• Fairfield Porter’s “Lizzie at the Table”: The American painter and art critic Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) considered Wallace Stevens a kindred spirit, reading and quoting from Stevens’ poetry and essays throughout his long career.  Porter’s Lizzie at the Table (1958), which includes as a still-life element the just-published Opus Posthumous, illustrates Stevens’ importance to the New York painters during the 1950s, when New York was replacing Paris as the center of the Western art world.
• Tennessee Williams’s “She Sang Beyond the Genius of the Sea”: painting by the famous playwright, inspired by “The Idea of Order at Key West”

Music Inspired by Wallace Stevens

• “A Mind of Winter” by George Benjamin (score): inspired by “The Snow Man”
• Three Songs by Michael Schachter (recordings): inspired by “The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad,” “The Snow Man,” and “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon”
• “Lockdown #15” by Blaine Dawson (recording): original composition that incorporates a reading of Wallace Stevens’s “The Idea of Order at Key West.” Click below:

Plays and Other Dramatic Works Inspired by Wallace Stevens

• Things as They Are, a play by David Todd, directed by Anjanette Hall, with music by Ben Chasny, offers a staged reflection on Stevens’s life and works. It was produced by Playwrights Local in Cleveland, OH, in May 2017. One of the performances may be viewed here.