By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm’ (1946) is one of Wallace Stevens’s finest later poems. In just sixteen lines and eight couplets, Stevens summons the quiet and calm of solitary reading inside a house. You can read ‘The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ (1934) is one of Wallace Stevens’s finest nature poems, but it is also a celebration of the transformative power of art. But there’s a little more to the poem than this glib summary suggests. You can read ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘A Postcard from the Volcano’ is one of Wallace Stevens’s most famous poems. It is also one of his more accessible. The poem was published in Stevens’s 1936 collection Ideas of Order. You can read ‘A Postcard from the Volcano’ here before proceeding to our analysis below, which homes in on the poem’s form, language, imagery, and themes. Although it is more straightforward than many of Stevens’s other poems, there is still much to discuss and unpick.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ appeared in Harmonium (1923), the first poetry collection of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens, although it had originally been published in an American magazine, Others, in 1917.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock’ is one of Wallace Stevens’s most assured, and popular, short poems. It belongs to his early period: it was first published in 1915 before being collected in his first book-length collection, Harmonium, in 1923. You can read ‘Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.