Title: On Extended Wings
Subtitle: Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems
First published: March 12, 1970
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.
Subjects: Stevens, wallace, 1879-1955, Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955, Criticism and interpretation, Critique et interprétation, Lyrik
People: Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
LC classification: PS3537.T4753 Z8