4 Wallace Stevens Quotes on Style

Wallace Stevens quotes on style

4. 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.

17. 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.

204. A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect but, most likely, of the opposite.

220. At the heart of many of Stevens's poems are harsh and unpalatable experiences revealed only gradually through his intense stylization.