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    Harmonium
    Harmonium
    Harmonium
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    Harmonium

    By Wallace Stevens

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    About this ebook

    "There are in Harmonium six or eight of the most beautiful poems an American has written. The poems see, feel, and think with equal success." — Randall Jarrell, Poetry and The Age
    An executive with a Connecticut-based insurance company, Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) wrote poetry in the evenings and during his daily commute. Harmonium, his first collection of verse, was published when he was 44 years old. Although largely overlooked upon its 1923 debut, the compilation is recognized today as an important contribution to Modernism, offering a diverse range of satirical and philosophical lyrical works that explore the nature of reality and the power of the imagination. They include some of Stevens's most famous and frequently studied works, including "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," and "Peter Quince at the Clavier." 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateApr 17, 2019
    ISBN9780486839387
    Harmonium

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    • 2/5
      Too florid for my tastes, and rarely striking.

    Book preview

    Harmonium - Wallace Stevens

    HARMONIUM

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

    EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: MICHAEL CROLAND

    Copyright

    Copyright © 2019 by Dover Publications, Inc.

    All rights reserved.

    Bibliographical Note

    This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, in 1923. A new introductory Note has been specially prepared for the present edition.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Names: Stevens, Wallace, 1879–1955, author.

    Title: Harmonium / Wallace Stevens.

    Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2019. | Series: Dover thrift editions | This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, in 1923.

    Identifiers: LCCN 2018049320 | ISBN 9780486832852| ISBN 0486832856

    Subjects: LCSH: American poetry—20th century.

    Classification: LCC PS3537.T4753 H3 2019 | DDC 811/.52—dc23

    LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049320

    Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

    83285601 2019

    www.doverpublications.com

    To my wife

    Note

    WALLACE STEVENS WAS born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. His father, a lawyer and a teacher who wrote poetry, supported Stevens’s education with an extensive home library. In high school, Stevens was a strong student and a newspaper reporter. He attended Harvard, where he received all of the school’s writing honors. He was a frequent writer for the Harvard Advocate and the editor of Harvard Monthly. In 1900, he dropped out of school after three years due to financial reasons. Stevens worked as a journalist before attending New York School of Law. Afterward he worked for various law firms before switching to the insurance industry, where he stayed for the rest of his career.

    After publishing his poems in Harvard publications as a student, Stevens put poetry on the back burner until he published poems in Poetry in 1914. He became a frequent contributor to literary magazines.

    Alfred A. Knopf published Harmonium, Stevens’s first poetry book, in 1923, when he was 44. Harmonium is widely considered his best book, showcasing his vast vocabulary, memorable phrasing, and powerful imagery. Poetry founder and editor Harriet Monroe reviewed the book favorably, writing, The delight which one breathes like a perfume from the poetry of Wallace Stevens is the natural effluence of his own clear and untroubled and humorously philosophical delight in the beauty of things as they are. The book was largely ignored by critics at the time and sold fewer than 100 copies. Knopf published a second edition, with 14 new poems, in 1931.

    Stevens wrote sparingly following the initial publication of Harmonium, but he rededicated himself to poetry in 1933. The following year, he published his second poetry collection, Ideas of Order. He continued publishing books of poetry over the next two decades. By the early 1950s, Stevens was revered as one of the best poets in the United States. Toward the end of his life, he received several honorary doctorates and the 1951 National Book Award. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, published in 1955, earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and a second National Book Award. Stevens died on August 2, 1955.

    Harold Bloom, a literary critic and the author of Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate, called Stevens the best and most representative American poet of our time.

    Contents

    Earthy Anecdote

    Invective Against Swans

    In the Carolinas

    The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage

    The Plot Against the Giant

    Infanta Marina

    Domination of Black

    The Snow Man

    The Ordinary Women

    The Load of Sugar-Cane

    Le Monocle de Mon Oncle

    Nuances of a Theme by Williams

    Metaphors of a Magnifico

    Ploughing on Sunday

    Cy Est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et Les Unze Mille Vierges

    Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores

    Fabliau of Florida

    The Doctor of Geneva

    Another Weeping Woman

    Homunculus et La Belle Etoile

    The Comedian as the Letter C

    From the Misery of Don Joost

    O, Florida, Venereal Soil

    Last Looks at the Lilacs

    The Worms at Heaven’s Gate

    The Jack-Rabbit

    Valley Candle

    Anecdote of Men by the Thousand

    The Silver Plough-Boy

    The Apostrophe to Vincentine

    Floral Decorations for Bananas

    Anecdote of Canna

    Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds

    Of Heaven Considered

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