The enigmatic poetry of Wallace Stevens
Stevens spent most of his life working at Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company — but in the evenings, he wrote some of the 20th century's most enigmatic poetry. Eleanor Cook, professor emerita of English at the University of Toronto and author of A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens, walks Michael through three of his poems.
For six months in his early 20s, Michael Enright was an auto renewal clerk in a large insurance company in downtown Toronto. He was also an avid poetry reader.
When he discovered that Wallace Stevens was the vice-president of an insurance company and a poet, he was sold.
But decades later, he's still struggling with his poems.
Stevens is sometimes described as a "willfully difficult poet." His poems are energetic, erudite, and utterly confounding.
Eleanor Cook is professor emerita of English at the University of Toronto, and the author of A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens.
She walks Michael through three Stevens poems:
Click 'listen' above to hear the interview.