On extended wings
Subtitle: Wallace Stevens' longer poems.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1969
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Number of pages: 334
Subjects: Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955
Description: Though Wallace Stevens' shorter poems are perhaps his best known, his longer poems, Helen Hennessy Vendler suggests in this book, deserve equal fame and equal consideration. Stevens' central theme--the worth of the imagination--remained with him all his life, and Vendler therefore proposes that his development as a poet can best be seen, not in description--which must be repetitive--of the abstract bases of his work, but rather in a view of his changing styles. The author presents here a chronological account of fourteen longer poems that span a thirty-year period, showing, through Stevens' experiments in genre, diction, syntax, voice, imagery, and meter, the inventive variety of Stevens' work in long forms, and providing at the same time a coherent reading of these difficult poems.
Notes: Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (p. 317-334).

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