Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 23:06:45 -0700
From: "William T. Ford" 
To: wallace_stevens@mail.wesleyan.edu
Subject: wallace_stevens Alice Corbin Henderson Letters

Two letters from Wallace Stevens to Alice Corbin Henderson appear in the new Library of America Wallace Stevens. COLLECTED POETRY AND PROSE (ed. by Kermode & Ricahrdson) 1997. Although there is an indication that these letters had been previously published, maddeningly, it did not say WHERE. The letters are remarkable: one contains an extensive discussion of Stevens' poetic technique, the other gives his opinion of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (As poetry it is surely negligible. ... Personally, I think it's a bore)

I recently found these letters, and some others, in the Spring 1988 issue of THE WALLACE STEVENS JOURNAL: Alan Filreis. Voicing the Desert of Silence: Stevens' Letters to Alice Corbin Henderson. WSJ, 12.1, 3-20. There are 6 letters in all, but the two above are by far the most interesting.

Filreis also cites the letters in his WALLACE STEVENS AND THE ACTUAL WORLD (Princeton, 1991), p.292,n.5., though this book examines a later period in Stevens' life. (I have always hoped that Professor Filreis would do a book on WS: The New York Years (1900-1916), nobody does a better job of weaving biographical, literary & contemporary historical materials into lively, informative narrative.)

Bill Ford

Document URL: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Stevens/kudos-ford.html
Last modified: Sunday, 05-Jul-1998 22:45:17 EDT