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The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

Wallace Stevens

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Wallace Stevens
Age: 75 †
Born: 1879
Born: October 2
Died: 1955
Died: August 2
Journalist
Lawyer
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Intelligence
Poetry
Almost
Success
Must
Successfully
Resist
Poem

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
Wallace Stevens
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To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.
Wallace Stevens
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How cold the vacancy When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist First sees reality. The mortal no Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.
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It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.
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After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends.
Wallace Stevens
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It may be that the ignorant man, alone, Has any chance to mate his life with life That is the sensual, pearly spouse, the life That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.
Wallace Stevens
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That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad.
Wallace Stevens
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One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls, When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops. He mocks the guinea, challenges The crow, inciting various modes. The sparrow requites one, without intent.
Wallace Stevens
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All of our ideas come from the natural world: trees equal umbrellas.
Wallace Stevens
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The imagination is the liberty of the mind It is intrpeid and eager and the extreme of its achievement lies in abstraction.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is a means of redemption.
Wallace Stevens
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I am the truth, since I am part of what is real, but neither more nor less than those around me.
Wallace Stevens
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The great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of earth remains to be written.
Wallace Stevens
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We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.
Wallace Stevens
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It is poverty's speech that seeks us out the most. It is older than the oldest speech of Rome. This is the tragic accent of the scene.
Wallace Stevens
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The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
Wallace Stevens
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The prologues are over. It is a question, now, Of final belief. So, say that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.
Wallace Stevens
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Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.
Wallace Stevens
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How red the rose that is the soldier
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is the statement of a relation between a man and the world
Wallace Stevens