Wallace Stevens - (Anniversary Collection) by Eugene Paul Nassar (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book presents for the first time a thorough study of the imagery in Wallace Stevens's poetry and the patterns which these images form. Heretofore, most discussions of Stevens's work presupposed an understanding of the difficult and bizarre surface imagery and dealt mainly with broad generalizations which often left the student of Stevens's poems unsatisfied. The brilliant surface of the poems, the detailed imagery of specific passages, is here examined clearly and systematically. The images, indexed at the back of the book, are examined in four natural groups: Figures of the Mind, of Disorder, of Order, and of Change. The last half of the book is concerned with close analyses of some longer poems of Stevens's using the information gleaned from the "anatomy" of the first half.

Review Quotes

"Eugene Nassar has given us the first close and detailed reading of Stevens's sometimes bizarre and always elusive figures and images. His method is a systematic, contextual scrutinizing of the interrelations of image, figure, diction, and tone; the result is a most informative book on Stevens."-- "Poetry"

About the Author

Eugene Paul Nassar received his B.A degree from Kenyon College, his M.A. from Worcester College, Oxford, and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. He was a Rhodes scholar, elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Woodrow Wilson and Cornell Graduate Fellow, and taught at Kenyon College, Hamilton College, and at Utica College.