Wallace Stevens

An item at American Writers Museum

Wallace Stevens became an accomplished and provocative poet while working as a Hartford insurance executive. The job provided stability as he mastered his approach to poetry, developing a voice that blended the philosophical and comic. His early collection of poems, Harmonium (1923), is notable for its wide-ranging vocabulary, memorable phrasing, and sophisticated imagery.

Stevens's later poems tended to be abstract, complex meditations on the intersection of imagination and objective reality. In his long poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), he reflects the need for art to offer meaning in a deficient modern world.

AMERICAN VOICES

An exhibit at American Writers Museum

American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.

This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.

American Writers Museum