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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.

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
Art
Primarily
True
Poets
Littles
Poem
May
Concerned
Little
Poet
Nothing
Poetry
Matter
Way
Style

More quotes by Wallace Stevens

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Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.
Wallace Stevens
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To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.
Wallace Stevens
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Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.
Wallace Stevens
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Yet there is no spring in Florida, neither in boskage perdu, nor on the nunnery beaches.
Wallace Stevens
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Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!
Wallace Stevens
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Union of the weakest develops strength not wisdom. Can all men, together, avenge one of the leaves that have fallen in autumn? But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow.
Wallace Stevens
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The death of Satan was a tragedy For the imagination.
Wallace Stevens
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Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.
Wallace Stevens
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Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.
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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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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Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates.
Wallace Stevens
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It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.
Wallace Stevens
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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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The imagination is man's power over nature.
Wallace Stevens
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Key West, unfortunately, is becoming rather literary and artistic.
Wallace Stevens
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At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
Wallace Stevens
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Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill.
Wallace Stevens
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A poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words.
Wallace Stevens
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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