Witty, ironic, and thought-provoking, the experimental style of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) forever changed the landscape of modern verse. This collection includes 82 works by the 1955 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, including such oft-studied compositions as "Sunday Morning," "Peter Quince at the Clavier," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and the title piece.
| ||||||||||||
Book Description
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good introduction,
This review is from: The Emperor of Ice-Cream (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)
Wallace Stevens was one of the best poets of the twentieth century, with his richly atmospheric writing and multilayered themes about religion, nature and the imagination. "The Emperor of Ice Cream" is a good introduction to his work, collecting various poems into one volume.
"Let the lamp affix its beam/The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream," Wallace writes in the title poem. Other poems included are the eerie "Tattoo" ("The webs of your eyes/Are fastened/To the flesh and bones of you/As to rafters or grass"), the thirteen-part poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," the haunting "Domination of Black" ("I saw how the night came,/Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks"), and the languid, semi-spiritual "Sunday Morning." The Dover Thrift collection does a good job of showing the various kinds of poetry that Stevens wrote -- some are infused with color, some with darkness, some with a rich overtone, some very brief like the tiny "Valley Candle." Many of Stevens' best poems are included in here. One thing that Stevens' writing always has is beauty -- even in the weird ones. With only a few words he can evoke images that are exquisite, soothing, even eerie ("My candle burned alone in an immense valley"). He also infuses his poetry with intense colors and plenty of nature references, birds and trees, snow and rain and wind. "The Emperor of Ice Cream" -- despite the somewhat silly title -- is an excellent showcase for some of Stevens' best works. Definitely worth checking out for fans of richly-conceived verse.
2.0 out of 5 stars
a very limited selection of Stevens' poetry,
By bleary in NYC (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Emperor of Ice-Cream and Other Poems (Paperback)
Two words pretty much sum up this collection: PUBLIC DOMAIN. It's only got what is available to reprint for free--Stevens' early poems. Some of these are nice, of course, but unless all you're looking for is Stevens' early poems you'd be better off with "Collected Poetry and Prose," or "Collected Poems," or "The Palm at the End of the Mind."
5.0 out of 5 stars
An introduction to an indispensable poet,
By
This review is from: The Emperor of Ice-Cream (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)
After Whitman and Dickinson, Stevens is the American poet. The great beauty of his lines is musical and lyrical, colorful and rich with light.His lines have memorable( and re-memberable quality) that few poets can match. He has a Keatsian long- line aesthetic feeling, a sense of sensual reality, an experiential touch .This combined with a reflectiveness which makes and aches at a harmony of its own.
Who can match lines like, (" Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings of those white elders, but escaping, left only Death's ironic scraping" or " Deer walk our mountains / and in the isolation of the sky at evening/ Casual flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations/ as they go downward to darkness on extended wings.") " A poet makes a music of his own and in his inner dissonance reflects a star a sea a world forever home in words whose Beauty Lines of Light attest."
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Citations (learn more)
36
books
cite this book:
See all 36 books citing this book
- Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney by Jahan Ramazani on 8 pages
- The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens (Cambridge Companions to Literature) by John N. Serio on page 154, page 182, and page 195
- Poetry Out Loud by Robert Alden Rubin on page 165, page 172, and Back Matter
- A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children by Caroline Kennedy on page 35, and Back Matter
- Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop (Literary Conversations) by George Monteiro on page 143, and page 144
See all 36 books citing this book
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
