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The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

The Corrected Edition

Author Wallace Stevens
Edited by John N. Serio, Chris Beyers
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Paperback
$20.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
5.28"W x 7.89"H x 1"D   | 15 oz | 24 per carton
On sale Aug 18, 2015 | 592 Pages | 9781101911686
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An essential book for all readers of poetry, and the definitive collection from the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet." 

Originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens’s seventy-fifth birthday, the book was rushed into print for the occasion and contained scores of errors. These have now been corrected in one place for the first time by Stevens scholars John N. Serio and Christopher Beyers, based on original editions and manuscripts.

The Collected Poems is the one volume that Stevens intended to contain all the poems he wished to preserve, presented in the way he wanted. It is an enduring monument to his dazzling achievement.

  • WINNER | 1955
    National Book Awards
  • WINNER | 1955
    Pulitzer Prize
“After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens could.” —Robert Fitzgerald

“One might as well argue with the Evening Star as find fault with so much wit and grace and intelligence . . . such an overwhelming and exquisite command both of the words and of the rhythms of our language; such charm and irony, such natural and philosophical breadth of sympathy, such dignity and magnanimity.” —Randall Jarrell
Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879, and died in Hartford, Connecticut, on August 2, 1955. Although he had contributed to the Harvard Advocate while in college, he began to gain general recognition only when Harriet Monroe included four of his poems in a special 1914 wartime issue of Poetry. Harmonium, his first volume of poems, was published in 1923, and was followed by Ideas of Order (1936), The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), Parts of a World (1942), Transport to Summer (1947), The Auroras of Autumn (1950), The Necessary Angel (a volume of essays, 1951), The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954), and Opus Posthumous (first published in 1957, edited by Samuel French Morse; a new, revised, and corrected edition by Milton J. Bates, 1989). Mr. Stevens was awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry of the Yale University Library for 1949. In 1951 he won the National Book Award in Poetry for The Auroras of Autumn, in 1955 he won it a second time for The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, which was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1955. From 1916 on, he was associated with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, of which he became vice president in 1934. View titles by Wallace Stevens
The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Copyright © 1990 by Wallace Stevens. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About

An essential book for all readers of poetry, and the definitive collection from the man Harold Bloom has called “the best and most representative American poet." 

Originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens’s seventy-fifth birthday, the book was rushed into print for the occasion and contained scores of errors. These have now been corrected in one place for the first time by Stevens scholars John N. Serio and Christopher Beyers, based on original editions and manuscripts.

The Collected Poems is the one volume that Stevens intended to contain all the poems he wished to preserve, presented in the way he wanted. It is an enduring monument to his dazzling achievement.

Awards

  • WINNER | 1955
    National Book Awards
  • WINNER | 1955
    Pulitzer Prize

Praise

“After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens could.” —Robert Fitzgerald

“One might as well argue with the Evening Star as find fault with so much wit and grace and intelligence . . . such an overwhelming and exquisite command both of the words and of the rhythms of our language; such charm and irony, such natural and philosophical breadth of sympathy, such dignity and magnanimity.” —Randall Jarrell

Author

Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879, and died in Hartford, Connecticut, on August 2, 1955. Although he had contributed to the Harvard Advocate while in college, he began to gain general recognition only when Harriet Monroe included four of his poems in a special 1914 wartime issue of Poetry. Harmonium, his first volume of poems, was published in 1923, and was followed by Ideas of Order (1936), The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), Parts of a World (1942), Transport to Summer (1947), The Auroras of Autumn (1950), The Necessary Angel (a volume of essays, 1951), The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954), and Opus Posthumous (first published in 1957, edited by Samuel French Morse; a new, revised, and corrected edition by Milton J. Bates, 1989). Mr. Stevens was awarded the Bollingen Prize in Poetry of the Yale University Library for 1949. In 1951 he won the National Book Award in Poetry for The Auroras of Autumn, in 1955 he won it a second time for The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, which was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1955. From 1916 on, he was associated with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, of which he became vice president in 1934. View titles by Wallace Stevens

Excerpt

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Copyright © 1990 by Wallace Stevens. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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