A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens

Description

Wallace Stevens is one of the major poets of the 20th century, and also among the most challenging. The author goes through each of Stevens' poems in his six major collections as well as his later lyrics, in chronological order. For each poem she provides an introductory head note and a series of annotations on difficult phrases and references.

Eleanor Cook is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Toronto. Her books include "Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, Against Coercion: Games Poets Play", and "Poetry, Word-Play, and Word-War in Wallace Stevens" (Princeton).

A ReadySteadyBooks.com Book of the Week "In contrast to guides that provide long, involved commentaries, Cook's incisiveness and brevity are impressive--she sheds light without forcing her interpretation."--Nancy R. Ives, libraryjournal.com "A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens is a solid reference work that will help open doors for a wide variety of readers. It will be especially useful to instructors who are beginning to teach Stevens, providing them with sources, analogues, translations, and other materials that will help students connect with Stevens' work with ease and pleasure."--Janet McCann, The Wallace Stevens Journal "Although the biographical and critical literature on this demanding modern American poet is extensive, this is a valuable and rich addition to that literature. Cook provides short paragraphs about the poems, each preceded by the poem's publication history. When more than one version of the poem exists, she provides necessary and interesting information about variations."--B. Wallenstein, Choice "A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens is designed for all these types of Stevens's readers--the knowledgeable, the studious, the enthusiastic, the occasional, the curious, the baffled but persistent at all levels."--William Baker, Library Review "Cook's annotated catalogue of Stevens's gaudy particulars is, like her other recent book on riddle and enigma, mesmerizing ... The section-by-section analyses of Stevens's longer poems are invaluable... All the individual glosses ... are, where relevant, cross-referenced to one another, giving the effect of diagonal threads running under the whole of Stevens's published work... These intra-Stevensian echoes are placed side by side with allusions to literary, philosophical, and biblical history, so that what you end up with is a version of world literature in which Stevens is always nearby, like some exotic common denominator."--Paul Grimstad, Yale Review "In addition to superb commentary, there's an Appendix--27 golden pages--on how to read poetry. And the guide to Stevens's poems is full of shrewd, humane, often witty insights into a poetry that we thought we had gotten over."--Tom D'Evelyn, The Books we loved in '07, The Providence Journal "Cook's Reader's Guide provides both the broad overviews and local glosses needed by serious students of Stevens's difficult poetry... Those glosses ... go well beyond simply noting publication history and defining unfamiliar terms. Indeed, many are small fragmentary essays, comprising paragraph-long overviews and important readings of individual phrases and images... Cook's glosses, like Stevens's lines, transform what might be woody apparatus into provocations to see anew. The ... appendix, 'How To Read Poetry, Including Stevens' ... should be of great service to novice readers of Stevens. Some of her advice here is commonsense and elementary, but some ... is fresh and even fun."--Michael Thurston, American Literary Scholarship