The Whole Harmonium

The Life of Wallace Stevens

Paul Mariani

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781451624380
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451624397
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

An “incandescent….redefining biography of a major poet whose reputation continues to ascend” (Booklist, starred review)—Wallace Stevens, perhaps the most important American poet of the twentieth century.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) lived a richly imaginative life that he expressed in his poems. “A biography that is both deliciously readable and profoundly knowledgeable” (Library Journal, starred review), The Whole Harmonium presents Stevens within the living context of his times and as the creator of a poetry that continues to shape how we understand and define ourselves.

A lawyer who rose to become an insurance-company vice president, Stevens composed brilliant poems on long walks to work and at other stolen moments. He endured an increasingly unhappy marriage, and yet he had his Dionysian side, reveling in long fishing (and drinking) trips to the sun-drenched tropics of Key West. He was at once both the Connecticut businessman and the hidalgo lover of all things Latin. His first book of poems, Harmonium, published when he was forty-four, drew on his profound understanding of Modernism to create a distinctive and inimitable American idiom. Over time he became acquainted with peers such as Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, but his personal style remained unique.

The complexity of Stevens’s poetry rests on emotional, philosophical, and linguistic tensions that thread their way intricately through his poems, both early and late. And while he can be challenging to understand, Stevens has proven time and again to be one of the most richly rewarding poets to read. Biographer and poet Paul Mariani’s The Whole Harmonium “is an excellent, superb, thrilling story of a mind….unpacking poems in language that is nearly as eloquent as the poet’s, and as clear as faithfulness allows” (The New Yorker).

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• 1. The Heaven of an Old Home: 1879–1897
• 2. Harvard: 1897–1900
• 3. Starting Out: 1900–1903
• 4. Two Versions of the American Sublime: 1903–1906
• 5. Wingèd Victory: 1907–1913
• 6. An Explosion in a Shingle Factory: 1913–1916
• 7. The Eye of the Blackbird: 1916–1918
• 8. Hartford on the Harmonium: 1919–1921
• 9. The Comedian as the Letter C: 1921–1923
• 10. A Baby among Us: 1923–1934
• 11. The Idea of Order at Key West: 1934–1936
• 12. The Man with the Blue Guitar: 1936–1937
• 13. The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words: 1938–1941
• 14. The Son Restores the Father: 1941–1945
• 15. Farewell to an Idea: 1944–1947
• 16. The Eye’s Plain Version: 1948–1949
• 17. The Obscurity of an Order: 1950–1951
• 18. A New Knowledge of Reality: 1952–1954
• 19. A Final Seriousness: 1954–1955
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Abbreviations Used in Notes
• Bibliography
• Poetry Credits
• Illustration Credits
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright