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Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail.

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
Whole
World
Vapid
Detail
Applied
Comparison
Details
Imagination

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A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.
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Most poets who have little or nothing to say are concerned primarily with the way in which they say it ... if it is true that the style of a poem and the poem itself are one, ... it may be ... that the poets who have little or nothing to say are, or will be, the poets that matter.
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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.
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Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill.
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It is time that beats in the breast and it is time That batters against the mind, silent and proud, The mind that knows it is destroyed by time.
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Above the forest of the parakeets, A parakeet of parakeets prevails, A pip of life amid a mort of tails.
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People ought to like poetry the way a child likes snow & they would if poets wrote it.
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It was autumn and falling stars Covered the shrivelled forms Crouched in the moonlight.
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The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
Wallace Stevens
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Revolution Is the affair of logical lunatics.
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The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.
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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Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Wallace Stevens
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It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.
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It is the sun that shares our works. The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.
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Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair. And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice
Wallace Stevens
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The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again.
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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The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
Wallace Stevens
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The yellow glistens. It glistens with various yellows, Citrons, oranges and greens Flowering over the skin.
Wallace Stevens