Background

This is about his childhood. Wallace Stevens was born on October 2, 1879, in Reading Pennsylvania. He was educated at Harvard and then New York Law School and he spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut .After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to 1907, he was hired on January 13, 1908, as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. In 1909, Wallace married Elsie Viola Kachel. By 1914, Wallace had become the vice-president of the New York office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri. On March 28, 1955 Stevens first went to see Dr. James Moher. In 1955, Wallace Stevens went to the doctor for a check up. They ran tests on him because he wasn't feeling well. Finally a month later they announced that he is suffering from stomach cancer. On August 1 he lapsed into a coma and died on August 2, 1955. He is buried at the Hartford's Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Poetry

Wallace Stevens's first book of poems included "The Harmonium" (Alfred A. Knopf), which was published in 1923. This poem exhibited the influence of both the English romantics and the French symbolists. In the year of 1931, Knopf published a second edition of Harmonium, which included fourteen new poems and left our three of the ones least favored. His major works include Ideas of Order (The Alcestis Press, 1935), The Man With the Blue Guitar (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937), Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (The Cummington Press, 1942), and a collection of essays on poetry, The Necessary Angel (Alfred A. Knopf, 1951).

Influences

While attending Harvard, a poet came and visited the university. Robert Bly had went to Harvard and after wards, Wallace got to meet him. Bly was Wallace's first influence to becoming a poet. Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler, among others, have chronicled the important influence of Wallace Stevens on many modern and contemporary poets. Even though Wallace had become a poet at a later age, he is still considered a famous poet to this day. Many of his poems influence other people's lives and help them realize what they want in life and what they want to change about themselves and what they do.