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Poetry in (the) place of the Polis: The question of politics in Wallace Stevens's Poems of the thirties
Citation
Tan, I. (2022). Poetry in (the) place of the Polis: The question of politics in Wallace Stevens's Poems of the thirties. Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 78(4), 103-128. https://doi.org/10.1353/arq.2022.0024
Author
Tan, Ian
Abstract
This essay will re-evaluate Stevens’s “apolitical” poetic stance during the decade as political statement based on pragmatic accommodation to the demands of reality on the poetic imagination. For Stevens, the dialectical tension between art and society is crucial in ensuring that the imagination remains alive to the continual formations of political reality which can never be fully ossified by any one ideological doctrine. Stevens ultimately enunciates a fuller vision of openness, for the Stevensian subject can negotiate politics on his own terms without being completely limited by it.
Date Issued
2022
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Journal
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory