Wallace Stevens Quotes on Style
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In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American - on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.
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Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.
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A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect but, most likely, of the opposite.
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At the heart of many of Stevens's poems are harsh and unpalatable experiences revealed only gradually through his intense stylization.