Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet.

Stevens attended Harvard, worked briefly for the New York Herald Tribune, and practiced law after attending New York Law School. His first poems were published in 1914 in Poetry magazine, after which he published frequently in literary journals. In 1916 he joined an insurance firm in Hartford, Connecticut, and in 1934 he became vice president and held that position until his death.

Wallace Stevens's first book, Harmonium (1923), proved too difficult for the general public, although already in it he showed his talent for exploring the imaginary in reality. Other collections were then published. Because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his work, Stevens is considered by many to be a difficult poet. But he was also recognized as an outstanding abstractionist and provocative thinker. In 1955, he won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for a collection of poems.