This general
overview of Wallace Stevens' work, introducing his individual
volumes of
poetry,
book-by-book, highlights the major points of his poetics without the usual associative amalgam of theme, form, diction, imagery, symbolism and belief that complicates most surveys of his poetry. The paper explains that the volumes appeared as separate
collections, but the Stevens criticism and scholarship invariably commingles them as if they were parts of a simultaneously generated whole. This book-by-book overview clarifies the
poetic perspective and suggests revisiting his collections with a fresh modular approach.