by Pericles Lewis Wallace Stevens’ long poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” (1942) lists three criteria for that ultimate poetic creation: “It must be abstract,” “It must change,” and “It must give pleasure.” The title of this major poem suggests that Stevens shared in the modernist fascination with ultimate answers even when those answers, not… Continue Reading Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
Tag: Wallace Stevens
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven
by Pericles Lewis In “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” (1950), Wallace Stevens writes of the possibility of a kind of poem that would avoid the vagaries of representation. describes the ideal of a language that could express reality as it is: The poem of pure reality, untouched By trope or deviation, straight to the… Continue Reading An Ordinary Evening in New Haven