An excellent introduction to "the best and most representative
American poet" (Harold Bloom), this palm-sized, keepsake edition is the
first separate publication of this remarkable collection of late
poems.
In 1955, shortly before his death, Wallace Stevens earned the Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for The Collected Poems of
Wallace Stevens. The collection gathered most of his life's work, and
featured 25 previously unpublished poems. Stevens imagined that those
poems would stand alone as their own volume--The Rock. Featuring some
of his most memorable poems, including "Not Ideas about the Thing but
the Thing Itself," The Rock is a sublime selection of works from one
of American's most brilliant, beloved modernist.
"After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might
have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens
could." --Robert Fitzgerald
"One might as well argue with the Evening Star and find fault with so
much wit and grace and intelligence . . . such an overwhelming and
exquisite command both of the worlds and of the rhythms of our language;
such charm and irony, such natural and philosophical breadth of
sympathy, such dignity and magnanimity." --Randall Jarrell
