Remarks by Wallace Stevens | V2Melody Quotations

“I believe in freedom regardless of form.”

Separates liberty in the poem from any particular verse shape · Note on poetry, 1937

“The humble are they that move about the world with the lure of the real in their hearts.”

Makes humility a hunger for the actual rather than self-effacement · Essay, About One of Marianne Moore's Poems

“The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them.”

Gives imagination priority over reason in how life is first inhabited · Essay, Imagination as Value, in The Necessary Angel

“The great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of earth remains to be written.”

Turns the unfinished task of poetry toward this world · Essay, The Necessary Angel

“It is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality.”

Casts imagination as a defence against the force of the real · Essay, The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words

“The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us.”

Makes the inner life the thing that keeps the outer world habitable · Essay, Imagination as Value, in The Necessary Angel

“The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.”

Binds a living imagination to contact with the actual · Essay, Imagination as Value, in The Necessary Angel

“To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences.”

Calls the loss of the gods a decisive modern experience, not a mere absence · Essay, Two or Three Ideas

“Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.”

Treats style as the thing itself rather than an ornament laid on · Essay, Two or Three Ideas

“After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.”

Names poetry as what remains when religious belief has gone · Notebook, Sur Plusieurs Beaux Sujets

“Poetry is a purging of the world's poverty and change and evil and death. It is a present perfecting, a satisfaction in the irremediable poverty of life.”

Offers poetry as a momentary completion inside an unfinished world · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.”

Makes a beginner's nerve the condition of new work · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“To have nothing to say and to say it in a tragic manner is not the same thing as having something to say.”

Separates solemn style from actual substance · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“A poem should be a part of one's sense of life.”

Asks that poetry belong to living rather than sit apart from it · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“Poetry is a search for the inexplicable.”

Defines the art by what it cannot finish explaining · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“The world is a force, not a presence.”

Prefers the world as pressure and motion to the world as scenery · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“God is in me or else is not at all.”

Locates divinity, if anywhere, inside the person rather than beyond · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“The poet is a god, or, the young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp.”

Sets early creative confidence against later wandering · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“Man is an eternal sophomore.”

A dry verdict on human unfinishedness · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“All history is modern history.”

Insists that the past is always read from the present · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“All poetry is experimental poetry.”

Makes experiment the ordinary condition of the art, not a school · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.”

Distinguishes easy emotion from feeling that has held · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.”

Casts attention to the world as desire rather than mere observation · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

“The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.”

A compact figure for turning raw life into finished art · Adagia, notebook aphorisms

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