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Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered, and: Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879-1923, and: Wallace Stevens: A Mythology of Self (review)

The task of any biographer of Wallace Stevens is a formidable one. Primary materials are lacking; Mrs. Stevens destroyed many of his letters after his death and sold off much of his personal library. The journals of his early years are spotty and heavily edited by both the poet and his wife. Stevens's family led a private existence; Stevens's few good friends have honored that privacy. The people he worked with have told us much about his outward demeanor; but even the study of his business career is impeded by his company's policy of destroying the records of old cases. Due to both happenstance and Stevens's fundamental reticence, the enigma of the man resists biography almost perfectly. Peter Brazeau's Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered begins in medias res, with Stevens out of work and about to embark on his lifelong career with the Hartford. This oral biography gives pride of place to the businessmen who knew Stevens. Most of the literary people Brazeau interviewed saw very little of Stevens, and simply offer their opinions about his character and poetry. The businessmen, on the other hand, saw much more of Stevens, often on a daily basis. There is a freshness and a distance from received literary opinion to their testimony; they see him as a man rather than as the Great Poet.