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Wallace Stevens Cory Williams

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Family/Background • Born in Reading Pennsylvania in 1879, died 1955 •

Father was a prosperous lawyer and a poetry lover • Attended Harvard for a
short period of time • Wrote for the Harvard Advocate when he attended
Harvard • Left Harvard to be a reporter for the NY tribune then shortly after
attended New York Law school • Did not really get into poetry until a later
age but was always interested in literature • Most of his works came after
the death of his father

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Writing Style • Stevens was a very abstract thinker • Intended for his poems
to be pondered • Did not have a specific stanza or rhyme pattern continue
throughout his poems, different poems were written on the way he felt

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Themes • Some of his poetry comes from historical or philosophical

background • A major theme in some of Stevens’ poetry is the idea that the
world we live in isn’t really a world itself, it’s the way we perceive it

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Interesting Facts • During the 1920s, '30s and '40s, Stevens frequently visited
Key West, where he famously argued with Robert Frost at a hotel in 1935 and
again in 1940 • Stevens broke his hand in 1936 when he punched Ernest
Hemingway in the jaw at a party • “Accuracy of observation is the equivalent
of accuracy of thinking”

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