Collected Public Domain Poems of Wallace Stevens, Volume 2

These are the poems Wallace Stevens wrote before he became Wallace Stevens. Composed in his twenties and early thirties, appearing in little magazines like Poetry, The Little Review, and The Dial, they trace the birth of one of America's most demanding and beautiful poets. Nearly seventy of these hundred poems would later find their way into Harmonium, the 1923 collection that announced a major voice. Here, we see Stevens experimenting with syntax and sound, wrestling with the relationship between imagination and reality, finding his signature blend of philosophy and sensuousness. The poems are年轻 and restless, full of the energy of a man who would spend his days as an insurance lawyer and his nights writing some of the twentieth century's most radical verse. For readers who know Stevens only from his later, more austere work, these early pieces reveal a poet surprisingly playful, eager to delight and disturb in equal measure.