Wallace Stevens's Late Poetry Analysis - Lecture 21

Explore the late poetry of Wallace Stevens in this 51-minute lecture from Yale University's Modern Poetry course. Delve into Stevens's conception of the poet as reader and the world as a text to be interpreted through analysis of poems like "Large Red Man Reading" and "The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain." Examine the poet's fascination with natural cycles and sensory experience in "The Plain Sense of Things." Conclude with an interpretation of "A Primitive Like an Orb" as Stevens's final vision of constant change in the world, where poetic wordplay plays a crucial role. The lecture covers five key poems, offering insights into Stevens's literary techniques and philosophical perspectives on poetry and reality.

Syllabus

- Chapter 1. Introduction: Wallace Stevens's Late Poems.
- Chapter 2. Wallace Stevens Poem: "Large Red Man Reading".
- Chapter 3. Wallace Stevens Poem: "The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain".
- Chapter 4. Wallace Stevens Poem: "The Plain Sense of Things".
- Chapter 5. Wallace Stevens Poem: "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself".
- Chapter 6. Wallace Stevens Poem: "A Primitive Like an Orb".