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The purpose of poetry is to make life complete in itself.

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
Life
Complete
Poetry
Purpose
Make

More quotes by 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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Perhaps there is a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagines are one: a state of clairvoyant observation, accessible or possibly accessible to the poet or, say, the acutest poet.
Wallace Stevens
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Ethics are no more a part of poetry than theyare of painting.
Wallace Stevens
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In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
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The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.
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The mind is the terriblest force in the world, father, Because, in chief, it, only, can defend Against itself. At its mercy, we depend Upon it.
Wallace Stevens
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One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry increases the feeling for reality.
Wallace Stevens
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All poetry is experimental poetry.
Wallace Stevens
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Poetry is the scholar's art.
Wallace Stevens
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The exceeding brightness of this early sun Makes me conceive how dark I have become.
Wallace Stevens
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For the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens
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The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should reveal things of which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which we have been conscious plus imagination.
Wallace Stevens
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To name an object is to deprive a poem of three-fourths of its pleasure, which consists in a little-by-little guessing game the ideal is to suggest.
Wallace Stevens
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The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the evening.
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Imagination is the will of things. . . .
Wallace Stevens
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The tomb in Palestine Is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.
Wallace Stevens
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The grackles sing avant the spring Most spiss oh! Yes, most spissantly. They sing right puissantly.
Wallace Stevens
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What's down below is in the past Like last night's crickets, far below.
Wallace Stevens
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It is never the thing but the version of the thing.
Wallace Stevens