Speaking of Stories

transforming short stories from the page to the stage

 

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WALLACE STEVENS

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) Born in Reading , Pennsylvania , Stevens attended Harvard and New York Law School . In 1916 he went to work for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, and would remain there, rising to vice-president, until his death in 1955. Though his first book of poetry, Harmonium, published in 1923, was well received by his peers, Stevens felt discouraged by the reviews and wrote little through the rest of the 1920’s. He didn’t publish new work until 1936 with Ideas of Order. He received the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award in 1946, the National Book Award in 1951 for The Auroras of Autumn, and in 1955 received the National Book Award for The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Although in later years he read his work at Wellesley and Columbia , Stevens turned down speaking requests early in his career, saying “I am not a troubadour and I think the public reading of poetry is something truly ghastly.”

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