Book contents
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: Poetry before 1800
- Part II A New Nation: Poetry from 1800 to 1900
- Part III Forms of Modernism, 1900–1950
- Chapter 22 The Twentieth Century Begins
- Chapter 23 Robert Frost and Tradition
- Chapter 24 T. S. Eliot
- Chapter 25 William Carlos Williams
- Chapter 26 Finding “Only Words” Mysterious
- Chapter 27 Marianne Moore and the Printed Page
- Chapter 28 The Formalist Modernism of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Helene Johnson, and Louise Bogan
- Chapter 29 The Romantic and Anti-Romantic in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens
- Chapter 30 Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and the East Coast Projectivists
- Chapter 31 Langston Hughes and His World
- Chapter 32 The Objectivists and the Left
- Chapter 33 “All the Blessings of This Consuming Chance”
- Chapter 34 Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, and the Lost World of Real Feeling
- Chapter 35 Writing the South
- Part IV Beyond Modernism: American Poetry, 1950–2000
- Selected Bibliographies
- Index
Chapter 29 - The Romantic and Anti-Romantic in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens
from Part III - Forms of Modernism, 1900–1950
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2014
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- The Cambridge History of American Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings: Poetry before 1800
- Part II A New Nation: Poetry from 1800 to 1900
- Part III Forms of Modernism, 1900–1950
- Chapter 22 The Twentieth Century Begins
- Chapter 23 Robert Frost and Tradition
- Chapter 24 T. S. Eliot
- Chapter 25 William Carlos Williams
- Chapter 26 Finding “Only Words” Mysterious
- Chapter 27 Marianne Moore and the Printed Page
- Chapter 28 The Formalist Modernism of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Helene Johnson, and Louise Bogan
- Chapter 29 The Romantic and Anti-Romantic in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens
- Chapter 30 Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and the East Coast Projectivists
- Chapter 31 Langston Hughes and His World
- Chapter 32 The Objectivists and the Left
- Chapter 33 “All the Blessings of This Consuming Chance”
- Chapter 34 Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, and the Lost World of Real Feeling
- Chapter 35 Writing the South
- Part IV Beyond Modernism: American Poetry, 1950–2000
- Selected Bibliographies
- Index
Summary
Wallace Stevens's poem makes a greater claim: the earth is held as the object of his perfect and compulsory love. His loathing of things as they are points to the future modernist's need to transform them through the projection of his imagination. Notably missing from his list of consolations is religion itself, although he was still taking communion. In the early journal entry already cited, Stevens defined his five consolations namely love, nature, friendship, work and phantasy. Each was posited on the foundation of physical well-being, there being nothing good in the world except it. By the time he wrote Yellow Afternoon, Stevens seemed to possess the consolations only of nature and phantasy. Stevens's renewed romanticism, always followed by its accompanying disavowals and reconstitutions, evolving into his own amassing grand poem and marking his unique testimony to modernism in the last century.
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- The Cambridge History of American Poetry , pp. 650 - 669Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014