Editing Wallace Stevens (section)

==Reception==
[[File:Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar with Mr. Wallace Stevens at Columbia University after receiving Doctor of Laws (LLD) on June 5, 1952.jpg|thumb|Stevens with [[B. R. Ambedkar]], the father of the [[Indian Constitution]], at [[Columbia University]] on June 5, 1952]]

===Early 20th century===
The initial reception of Stevens's poetry followed the publication of his first collection of poems, ''Harmonium'', in the early 1920s. Comments on the poems were made by fellow poets and a small number of critics including [[William Carlos Williams]] and Hi Simons.<ref name="Mariani, Paul 2016. Page 405"/> In her book on Stevens's poetry, [[Helen Vendler]] writes that much of the early reception of his poems was oriented to symbolic reading of them, often using simple substitution of metaphors and imagery for their asserted equivalents in meaning. For Vendler, this method of reception and interpretation was often limited in its usefulness and would eventually be replaced by more effective forms of literary evaluation and review.<ref name="Vendler, Helen 1969, p. 13">Vendler, Helen. ''On Extended Wings'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969, p. 13.</ref>

===Late 20th century===
After Stevens's death in 1955, the literary interpretation of his poetry and critical essays began to flourish with full-length books written about his poems by such prominent literary scholars as Vendler and [[Harold Bloom]]. Vendler's two books on Stevens's poetry distinguished his short poems and his long poems and suggested that they be considered under separate forms of literary interpretation and critique. Her studies of the longer poems are in her book ''On Extended Wings'' and lists Stevens's longer poems as including "[[The Comedian as the Letter C]]", "[[Sunday Morning (poem)|Sunday Morning]]", "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle", "Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery", "Owl's Clover", "[[The Man with the Blue Guitar]]", "Examination of the Hero in a Time of War", "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction", "Esthetique du Mal", "Description without Place", "Credences of Summer", "The Auroras of Autumn", and his last and longest poem, "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven".<ref name="Vendler, Helen 1969, p. 13"/><ref>{{cite web | url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/01/specials/bloom-stevens.html | title=Notes Toward a Supreme Poetry }}</ref> Another full-length study of Stevens's poetry in the late 20th century is Daniel Fuchs's ''The Comic Spirit of Wallace Stevens''.<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41938383 | jstor=41938383 | last1=Philbrick | first1=Charles | title=Reviewed work: The Comic Spirit of Wallace Stevens, Daniel Fuchs | journal=Criticism | date=1965 | volume=7 | issue=1 | pages=112–114 }}</ref>

===Early 21st century===
Interest in the reading and reception of Stevens's poetry continues into the early 21st century, with a full volume dedicated in the [[Library of America]] to his collected writings and poetry. In his book on the reading of Stevens as a poet of what he calls "philosophical poetry", [[Charles Altieri]] presents his own reading of such philosophers as Hegel and Wittgenstein while presenting a speculative interpretation of Stevens under this approach.<ref>Charles Altieri. ''Wallace Stevens and the Demands of Modernity: Toward a Phenomenology of Value.'' Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2013.</ref> In his 2016 book ''Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens'', [[Simon Critchley]] indicates a refinement of the appreciation of the interaction of reality and poetry in Stevens's poems, writing: "Steven's late poems stubbornly show how the mind cannot seize hold of the ultimate nature of reality that faces it. Reality retreats before the imagination that shapes and orders it. Poetry is therefore the experience of failure. As Stevens puts it in a famous late poem, the poet gives us ideas about the thing, not the thing itself."<ref>Simon Critchley (2016). ''Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens''. Routledge Press.</ref>