On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems Revised Edition Contributor(s): Vendler, Helen (Author) |
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ISBN: 0674634365 ISBN-13: 9780674634367 Publisher: Harvard University Press OUR PRICE: $38.95 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 1969 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Poetry - Poetry - Literary Criticism | American - General |
Dewey: 811.52 |
LCCN: 70082299 |
Physical Information: 0.99" H x 5.25" W x 8.15" (0.92 lbs) 312 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher 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 Mrs. 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. She concludes, "Stevens 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." |
Contributor Bio(s): Vendler, Helen: - Helen Vendler is A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. |