The late poetry of Wallace Stevens is presented and analyzed. Stevens's conception of the poet as reader and the world as a text to be read and translated is considered in "Large Red Man Reading" and "The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain." The poet's preoccupation with natural cycles and sensory experience is exhibited in "The Plain Sense of Things." Finally, "A Primitive Like an Orb" is interpreted as Stevens's final vision of ceaseless change and transition in the world, in which the poet's verbal play participates.

Reading assignment:

Wallace Stevens: "Large Red Man Reading," "The Plain Sense of Things," "The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain," "The Planet on the Table," "Reality is an Activity of the Most August Imagination," "Of Mere Being," "The River of Rivers in Connecticut," "A Primitive Like an Orb," "World as Meditation," "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour," "Not Ideas About the Thing," "A Mythology Reflects Its Region"