From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-A selection of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (1954), comes alive in the author's own voice. Insurance lawyer by day and poet by night, Stevens is known for his command of language and an abstraction he felt was necessary to provoke interest in his work by fostering a sense of mystery. In "The Idea of Order in Key West," Stevens writes about walking on a beach and seeing a girl singing to the ocean, and deciding it is her way of creating order out of chaos. "It may be that in all her phrases stirred/The grinding water and gasping wind/But it was she and not the wind we heard." A poem of his old age, "The Auroras of Autumn" is emotionally powerful and sadly poignant as he bids farewell to his past in a noble and dignified tone. The 15 readings are edited from live performances and at least one studio recording, evident by the change in sound quality from one poem to another. You can hear peripheral noise such as coughing in the audience during the live readings, but the studio renditions are extremely clear nearly 50 years later. American literature teachers will find this a valuable primary source for students.Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NYCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Stevens is indisputably one of masters of modern American poetry. Winner of nearly every major poetry prize, Stevens broke from strict poetic traditionalists, finding his rhythms and rhymes in natural speech and common words. This production includes a helpful introduction by series editor J. D. McClatchy, a brief biography with photos, and the texts of 14 selected poems. The poems begin in 1921, early days for the Imagist movement, and end in 1954, a year before Stevens's death. Although the sound quality is occasionally uneven, this remains a collection to hear more than once. The CD format is perfect for poetry. Listening to Stevens read his own work enhances what can only be called a literary treasure. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a giant in the history of American poetry, at once an exhilarating modernist dandy and a champion of earlier Romantic traditions. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he spent his professional life as an inusrance company executive, but kept a sharp divide between his business and literary interests. A private man, he composed his poems while walking to and from work and at home tended to his garden and his collection of French books and paintings. All the while, there stirred in his mind an intense sensuality as well as a somber realization of human limits. He poured it into poems that stand now as landmarks in our cluture, poems that sing of the power of the imagination to both transform and transcend reality. For Stevens, poems were meant to quicken our sense of the world, to refresh us, to take us back to an "immaculate beginning," to give each of us "a new knowledge of reality." And so they do: the work of Wallace Stevens is of glittering, challenging, ultimately consoling richness.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile