Wallace Stevens, an outstanding and a remarkable poet, has succeeded to make his poetry increasingly received, due recognition, as one of the great achievements of our time running through endless transformations of setting and mood, in which the life of the mind, caught in its double fate of self and world, is the constant theme of the drama. Moreover, Stevens' poetry is a poetry of the most lavish variety and the most profound unity, of the most baffling obscurity and the most immediate power. In fact, his poetry is an outer projection rather an outcome of the moral and theoretic unity of his beliefs which proves that Stevens was a master of a remarkably precise and clear sighted doctrine whose main issue sheds the light on the major aspects of actual poetry.
As a matter of fact, Stevens' poetry ranges between two dominating rather powerful and contending temperamental strains. For instance, on the one hand, his poetry reveals an absolutely skeptical spirit for who denounces as well as dismiss religion in its rigid concepts and in its eccentric inflexibility, believing that the god is a supreme poetic idea rather an ultimate illusion, to which we must come when we have achieved disillusion with respect to all false ideals. On the other hand, Stevens restless and contemptuous poetry that approximates the vulgar esthetics, is at the same time balanced by soft poetry that tries to grab a possible basis for affirmation and acceptance driven by an irresistible tendency towards peace of mind and comfort of soul. As a result, the poetry of Wallace Stevens is the record of a lifelong attempt to discover what must be rejected and what can be affirmed in the translation of a pure poetic experience.
It is worth noting that Stevens sought in his poetry the transcendental truth that lies behind the sensed world where the search of a single truth in an impossible and a fruitless task. As a result, Stevens rejects Christianity as much on moral and emotional as on intellectual grounds, for although the grand design posited by religion no longer commands acceptance, the mind's desire for order and meaningfulness in its world remains and must be satisfied. Consequently, a new order must be discovered and affirmed where a valid order has its sources in man himself and the reality of his experience. On the other hand, Stevens' poetry presents in front of us a violent refusal to the impotent consolations of wishful thinking and sentimentalist; therefore, declaring a pattern of steps towards a state of a spiritual exactest poverty in which all the false wealth of the spirit has been castaway for being the godfather of the misleading abstractness and the eluding fancies.
The unbounded effectiveness of Stevens' poetry lies in his incredible ability to create an image of whatever sort the occasion requires. Accordingly, when Stevens is able to appeal unconditionally to his magnificent poetic experience, he delivers a true poetry which ceases to be dominated by negative emotions and moves toward satisfaction, affirming a limited but valid relationship among certain parts of the transcendental world. Hence, he succeeded in such creations to attain a level of imaginative capability that is accompanied by a calm and lucid strength as distinguished from visionary fervor or exaltation where the language of the poems appears to be extremely and correspondingly simple rather purely clear.
It is worth noting, here at the end, that the poetry of Stevens records from day to day the life of a changing consciousness in a changing world. Because it is a human record, it presents contradictions which cannot be resolved in logical terms, for it can only find reconciliation in such revolting poetry. Its inconsistency reflects those fluctuations of inner strength whereby the adversities that depress us at one time exhilarate us at another. But more importantly, it reflects the fact that while the goal of the mind remains as a side issue, our progress towards it takes different forms according to our state or the conditions of the external world.
