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Wallace Stevens Quotes about Poetry

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

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

Wallace Stevens
Poetry, Purpose, Poetry Is
Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.243, Vintage

All poetry is experimental poetry.

Wallace Stevens
Poetry, Poetry Is
1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

Wallace Stevens
Poetry, Dresses, Worms
1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

Poetry is a means of redemption.

Wallace Stevens
Mean, Poetry, Redemption
1957 Opus Posthumous, Aphorisms,'Adagia'.

The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

Wallace Stevens
Success, Poetry, Intelligence
Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.184, Knopf

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Wallace Stevens
Poetry, Invisible, Priests
Opus Posthumous (1957) "Adagia"

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.

Wallace Stevens
Writing, Men, Poetry

Poetry is a finikin thing of air That lives uncertainly and not for long Yet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.

Wallace Stevens
Air, Long, Poetry
Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.155, Vintage

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
Real, Poetry, Perception

Poetry is a satifying of the desire for resemblance.

Wallace Stevens
Art, Poetry, Desire

You know that the nucleus of a time is not The poet but the poem, the growth of the mind Of the world, the heroic effort to live expressed As victory. The poet does not speak in ruins Nor stand there making orotund consolations. He shares the confusions of intelligence.

Wallace Stevens
Confusion, Poetry, Effort
Wallace Stevens (1964). “the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”

Poetry is poetry, and one's objective as a poet is to achieve poetry precisely as one's objective in music is to achieve music.

Wallace Stevens
Poetry, Achieve, Music Is
Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.318, Vintage

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
Art, Poetry, Style
Wallace Stevens (1997). “Collected Poetry and Prose”

Money is a kind of poetry.

Wallace Stevens
Poetry, Kind, Making Money
Quoted in Harper's, Oct 1985.

At evening casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Wallace Stevens
Wings, Poetry, Darkness
'Sunday Morning, I' (1923)

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