"The Red Wheelbarrow" and "The Snow Man": A Reading

Abstract

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), to whom Theodore Roethke, speaking for the next generation of American poets, once paid tribute by mentioning him as "our father," was a private and reticent man leading a secluded life (McMichael, 1989). In spite of his original talent and dedication as a poet, he was not part of the mainstream movement of modern poetry represented by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Stevens had his first book of poetry poetry Harmonium published in 1923 at the age of forty-four, His recognition came slowly, as did appreciation of his work, although he was to become one of the most celebrated of American poets in his final years. For the common reader, he was generally viewed as being either abstruse, eccentric, masterful, philosophical, or even inane depending on the reader's taste or preconception. Whatever the judgment, the tenacious and not infrequently playful metaphysicality of the poet's creative imagination is central to the understanding of his poetry, which characteristically explores the relation between subject and object, perceriver and perceived, fiction and fact, and so forth.