Wallace Stevens as an American Poet

January 17, 2012 - Helen Vendler, one of the leading American poetry critics, as well as a distinguished professor in Harvard University's Department of English, discusses Wallace Stevens, the poet. She dives into some of his work in order to show why he is one of the finest American poets to set ink to paper. Wallace Stevens was born in 1879 and died in 1955 and was awarded a Pulitzer prize that same year.
Stanford University:
www.stanford.edu/
Stanford Humanities Center:
shc.stanford.edu/
Stanford University Channel on KZbin:
/ stanford

[@purpledanny1958]

Vendler is the most careful and also the most eloquent explainer of poetry. She deserves her name as the queen in the demesne of poetry criticism. I don't have enough of listening to her. Thanks for uploading!

[@charlespeterson3798]

Who could mistake Stevens for anything but an American? To my ear, he is as American as Whitman. Anyhoo, Stevens gives me more pleasure than any poet of any I can think of. That we can go to a computer and listen to a scholar like Professor Vendler describe genius is a gift that is sublime.

[@CesarClouds]

The library at the college I go to occasionally has a table with free books and I got one edited by her, Contemporary American Poetry. The first poem I read was Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a blackbird. What a delight!

[@rapier1954]

Vendler has eloquently put forth what she thinks Stevens is on about, and has written about him as well, as has Bloom and at times there is a fuzzy consensus as to what the meaning of the poetry is between the two of them, at other times no agreement, and at other times both will say on occasion they don't know what the poetry means. But like all true believers, they hasten to add, even when it is incomprehensible, it is still profound.

[@farhannadersahawneh9390]

This is a tremendous lecture.

[@windstorm1000]

Our greatest American poet--possibly---he's not for everybody who likes realist things like Frost (whom I also like)--rather more the imagery counterpart of Dickenson.

[@augustosarmentodeoliveira3023]

kudos for the Stanford audio people

[@PoetryETrain]

Thank you, this has been added to a playlist...

[@gorbochevy]

I subscribe to Bloom's opinion of Stevens as a direct descendent of Wordsworth. His is a subjective territory of the 'metaphysician' exploring layers of reality, dithyrambic, though less an apparent poet of the senses, as Wordsworth and most Romantics like Shelley, and more implicitly meant to react the senses through word-consciousness, like Hart Crane or Whitman. The meditative sequences like Notes Toward a Supreme fiction indicate this. Cribled pears dripping a morning sap.wrote this in hurry

[@abooswalehmosafeer173]

I am still learning.Its so so so vast as Americas is gargantuan and as so is Europe not less Asias.Too much yet too little.I am an Islander. A Grain of sand Wherein lies the Whole Multiverses. Word is the Trait-D'union. Sensibility Sensation Senses. I am trying here Wish me Luck Please. Thanks.

[@MarkMiner-ei6dv]

It's the colors of the feather-cape HITTING WALLY IN THE FACE that set up the systole/diastole that drives a WS poem. The cape hits Wally in the face; Wally must hit back; knows he's not up to it -- This might just as well be a poem about him getting hit by Hemingway!-- and the resulting poem is made of of the vacillating feelings about wishing to be strong enough to punch the cape back (i.e., was powerful enough an aesthetic god to create something beautifuller than the cape, and put it in the shade) but knowing that his fate is to always be the man that gets punched in the face by the cape, and take it passively, writing, at most, a poetic response to it, to all that aggressive beauty.

[@dennisrohatyn7782]

In lieu of a proper eulogy, I can only offer the following lines: In the dictionary, next to the phrase ‘magisterial scholarship’ there’s a picture of Helen Vendler. Her book on Shakespeare’s Sonnets is a case in point, but there are many others. At one time she was married to a philosopher, but she had the good sense to get rid of him and strike out on her own, which made her an even bigger hit. Like most women of her generation (and well beyond), she had to be twice as good as the men, just to get her foot in the door. Fortunately, she was three times better than anyone around, so the door-keeper finally let her in, but not before she had written a book about him that would make Kafka proud, even as he shut it on himself. She lived to be 90, but her legacy is incalculable-and her scholarship remains, for lack of a better word, impeccable.

[@1330m]

W stevens : Huh kyung young sheer genius

[@matiaskunkel657]

brillante

[@johnmartin2813]

In 'it must change' is 'change' transitive or intransitive?

[@shangrila73eldorado]

i think intransitive

[@johnmartin2813]

​@@shangrila73eldorado : More likely it's intended to be both. Poetry tends to be like that.

[@shangrila73eldorado]

@@johnmartin2813 Nah, sir. There are grammar rules.

[@johnmartin2813]

'Grammar rules' can be read in two ways.

[@johnmartin2813]

​@@shangrila73eldorado:

[@BardSonic]

There is paradoxically an absence noticeablely present in his poetry.

[@shangrila73eldorado]

lol

[@windstorm1000]

if one is to read poetry is public one has to be an actor as well---its required to carry the imagery over.

[@lawsonj39]

I guess you meant "if one is to read poety IN public," not IS.

[@shangrila73eldorado]

true. this presentation is dreadful

[@dantean]

Dear, dear Helen. Such a brilliant woman, such a crushingly dull speaker. I tried so hard to sit through her classes -- Stevens, American poetry, and the Romantics were my ONLY interests in grad school and to this day-- but she's like listening to paint dry. Better to read her. Thanks for posting, though, of course.

[@dsly100]

A clear separation between the criticism and the poetry is required. The voice must change. Even if only into a quasi-liturgical incantation as in the way Stevens reads aloud. This would also alleviate some of the dullness of delivery. Stevens comes off so dull and matter-of-fact in this essay. Fighting petty wars. But still a helpful survey of three sections of The Notes.

[@AtEboli]

I noticed the same thing. Between that, and the speaker constantly losing her voice or having mechanical difficulties, it was a somewhat hard to follow lecture.

[@zacharygarza1847]

“What ever might have been here before” , lol really?

[@joeynickles7962]

What a childish premise. "Oh, we good 'Merikan scholars must redeem Stevens' as a distinctly 'Merikan poet." An anxiousness indicative of the ultimate pettiness that lies at the center of the Empire's academy. Stevens was not petty. And he doesn't belong to the Empire. He belongs to humanity and to the ages.

[@StephenYuan]

I have to disagree with you about the books. Vendler is pretty boring all the time, and she has no ear. I don't see, for instance, how anyone could consider Jorie Graham a great poet.

[@jmichaelortiz]

Jorie has some good ones; Ms. Vendler has tremendous IQ but nearly no imagination. She is a very nice, but I don't think her criticism sees the poetic woods for the linguistic trees.

[@shangrila73eldorado]

presentation is a bore. no consideration for her audience. monotone. high-pitched.

[@UpperCrustthe3rd]

Rest in peace.