This is one of those great books where almost every sentence is so essential to the overall argument that once you've stepped away from the actual business of reading, it's hard to express in any quick or easy way what you've just been immersed in.* This probably means, of course, that I'll have to keep going back to it from time to time—and the thickness of the essays makes sense, give the fact that Stevens was, after all, a poet.

*(Note that this quality also makes it difficult to provide a quantitative rating, which is in no way a bad thing.)

A rich essay on the power of imagination, with many relevant observations both for the poet and the philosopher. ( )

This selection of essays represents Stevens's thought about the craft and meaning of poetry. Based primarily on talks that he gave over a period of years the essays are informative while also being difficult and problematical at times. In their difficulty they mirror much of his poetry.

Stevens controverts the notion that the imagination is a counterpoint to reality and instead insists that the two are in essential interplay: ( )

Talking of poetry is a kind of poetry, and Wallace Stevens does his best to assert that. Being a man known for his dense and wildly imaginative poetry, his prose is no different. In the seven essays collected here, he winds a path through reality, imagination, poetry, philosophy, and religion. Along the way, we get a momentary glimmer of his views on the Bible, communism, and the state of literature and art in his day. How any man could be this linguistically and philosophically limber and still work as the vice president of an insurance company is beyond me. The casual reader must be warned, though, that this book, although slim, is jam-packed and will take a steady mind to get through. ( )

Not an easy read; this poet's prose is leaden compared to his verse, but it is worth the work for the brilliant ideas embedded in the rhetoric. ( )