Title
Wallace Stevens and the Mode of the Ordinary
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-2008
Department
English
Language
English
Publication Title
Twentieth-Century Literature
Abstract
No twentieth-century poet attended more to daily routine than did Wallace Stevens. From a 1927 letter that outlines his schedule (Collected 941) to a 1955 message in which he describes "trying to pick up old habits," from the "Exchequering" (34) quotidian of "The Comedian as the Letter C" to the recurrent daily syllables of "The World as Meditation" (442), ordinary patterns are vital to both his life and his art. Stevens sometimes struggled with diurnal repetition and sometimes tried to escape it, but he never took such regularity for granted; in his writing and living, he would redeem rather than evade quotidian necessity. Through this effort he realizes a vital philosophical possibility: his ordinary rounds provide a response to dualism that resists idealist and empiricist extremes.
DOI
10.1215/0041462X-2008-2005
Recommended Citation
Phillips, Siobhan. "Wallace Stevens and the Mode of the Ordinary." Twentieth-Century Literature 54, no. 1 (2008): 1-30.
Comments
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