Wallace Stevens is considered as an unapologetically Romantic poet of imagination. His search for meaning in a universe without religion in "Sunday Morning" is likened to Crane's energetic quest for meaning and symbol. In "The Poems of Our Climate," Stevens's desire to reduce poetry to essential terms, and then his countering resistance to this impulse, are explored. Finally, "The Man on the Dump" is considered as a typically Stevensian search for truth in specifically linguistic terms.

Reading assignment:

Wallace Stevens: "Sunday Morning," "Peter Quince at the Clavier," "The Snow Man," "The Emperor of Ice Cream," "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon," "Anecdote of the Jar," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "The Idea of Order at Key West," "The Poems of Our Climate," "Study of Two Pears," "The Man on the Dump," "Of Modern Poetry"