Wallace Stevens: Rage for Order

This revisionary study of Wallace Stevens queries the dominant interpretations of the poet's career. It redirects the reader's attention to the neglected achievement of Stevens' first book, HARMONIUM (1923), and examines the pluralism of these early poems in the context of current critical revaluations of modernisms. The poetry Stevens went on to write is interrogated with scepticism. In major focus here is the figure of the hero or Major Man in poems and prose written at the time of the Second …