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A review by steviec
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens
5.0
I absolutely did not think I was gonna like this book very much. Wallace Stevens was an insurance man and a bigshot executive as a day job. Wallace Stevens was a conservative and kind of a dick, he picked fights with Robert Frost and Hemingway (I mean I'll give him Hemingway). This reputation preceded my reading of these poems and that reputation did not do these poems justice.
I got this book to read Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction. I imagine a lot of people read that one in college but I did not and it blew me away. But Wallace Stevens surprised me with his positivity. He surprised me with so many lines that I could never list here, but I will list just a few anyway because this is my review and I can.
"There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill."
"I have finished my combat with the sun;
And my body, the old animal,
Knows nothing more."
"... Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake"
I got this book to read Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction. I imagine a lot of people read that one in college but I did not and it blew me away. But Wallace Stevens surprised me with his positivity. He surprised me with so many lines that I could never list here, but I will list just a few anyway because this is my review and I can.
"There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill."
"I have finished my combat with the sun;
And my body, the old animal,
Knows nothing more."
"... Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake"