Though Wallace Stevensâe(tm) shorter poems are perhaps his best known, his longer poems, Helen Hennessy Vendler suggests in this book, deserve equal fame and equal consideration. Stevensâe(tm) central themeâe"the worth of the imaginationâe"remained with him all his life, and Mrs. Vendler therefore proposes that his development as a poet can best be seen, not in descriptionâe"which must be repetitiveâe"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 Stevensâe(tm) experiments in genre, diction, syntax, voice, imagery, and meter, the inventive variety of Stevensâe(tm) work in long forms, and providing at the same time a coherent reading of these difficult poems. She concludes, âeoeStevens was engaged in constant experimentation all his life in an attempt to find the appropriate vehicle for his expansive consciousness
he found it in his later long poems, which surpass in value the rest of his work.âe.
Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (pages 317-334)