This site provides a brief biography of Stevens, a selected bibliography, and the texts of several of his poems.

BIOGRAPHY
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Stevens graduated from Harvard in 1900, worked for a year as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, graduated from New York University Law School in 1903, and practiced law in New York for twelve years. From 1916 to 1955, Stevens worked for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, where he was appointed vice-president in 1934. He was in his forties when he published his first book of poetry, Harmonium (1923).

Stevens argued that poetry is a "supreme fiction" that shapes chaos and provides order to both nature and human relationships. He illuminates his philosophy in Ideas of Order (1935) and Notes toward a Supreme Fiction (1942). His Collected Poems (1954) won the Pulitzer Prize and established him as a major American poet.