Wallace Stevens

Those things that are not described do not exist, so that in putting together a review like Origenes you are really putting together a world. You are describing a world and by describing it you are creating it." (Letter of WS to Rodriguez-Feo, 1945)

"The act of editing a review is a creative act and, in general, the power of literature is that in describing the world it creates what it describes.

Certain Phenomena of Sound (1947)

Certain Phenomena of Sound (1947)

To an Old Philosopher in Rome (1952)

Excerpt of a letter from Stevens to Barbara Church (1948)

The poet seems to confer his identity on the reader. It is easiest to recognize this when listening to music — I mean this sort of thing: the transference. (Adagia, 901)

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly. (Adagia, 903)

Wine and music are not good until afternoon. But poetry is like prayer in that it is most effective in solitude and in the times of solitude as, for example, in the earliest morning. (Adagia, 903)

The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), section XXXII

"Re-statement of Romance", originally published in The New Republic, 1935.

Letter from Wallace Stevens to his daughter, Holly Stevens, who was planning to drop out of college. (Letters 425-6, 1942)

The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937), section XXII

"Analysis of a Theme", View Magazine, 5 (Oct. 1945)

'Mozart, 1935', published in Ideas of Order (1936)