The Collected Public Domain Poems of Wallace Stevens, Volume 1


Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)

(4.6 stars; 7 reviews)

A collection of Wallace Stevens poems written before 1923.

Stevens trained to be a lawyer. Within eleven years after this series of poems were written, he was vice-president at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in Connecticut. He continued to pursue a quiet life of poetry and correspondence and for the remainder of his life he nurtured his contemplative habit of observation and writing as he walked from home to work and back again. Few at Hartford knew of his world acclaim as a poet. While his major work is considered to have been written when he was much older, many of these early poems are firm classics in the American poetic canon, including: “Anecdote of the Jar,” “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” “Peter Quince at the Clavier,” “Sunday Morning,” “The Snow Man,” “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and many others. Stevens died of cancer in 1955, shortly after receiving that year’s Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

These poems originally appeared in a variety of magazines (Others, Secession, Rogue, The Soil, The Modern School, Broom, Contact, The New Republic, The Measure, The Little Review, The Dial, and particularly in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.) Nearly 70 of the 101 published poems were later collected in Stevens' first published collection of poems, HARMONIUM. (Summary by Alan Davis Drake) (1 hr 7 min)

Chapters

Anecdote of Canna 1:00 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Anecdote of Men by the Thousand 1:18 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Anecdote of the Jar 1:04 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Another Weeping Woman 1:06 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Apostrophe to Vincentine, The 1:42 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Autumn 0:47 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Banal Sojourn 1:32 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Bantams in Pine-Woods 1:15 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws, The 1:36 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Bowl 0:54 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Carnet de Voyage 4:11 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Cortège for Rosenbloom 1:50 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Cuban Doctor, The 0:51 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician, The 1:02 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Depression Before Spring 0:47 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock 1:02 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Domination of Black 1:33 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Earthly Anecdote 1:08 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Emperor of Icecream, The 1:25 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Explanation 0:49 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Exposition of the Contents of a Cab 1:08 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Florist Wears Knee-Breeches, The 0:56 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs 1:29 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
From a Junk 0:51 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
From the Misery of Don Joost 1:00 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Gray Room 1:09 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Gubbinal 0:54 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Hibiscus on the Sleeping Shores 1:17 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Home Again 0:36 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Hymn from a Watermellon Pavilion 1:24 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
In Battle 0:55 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Indigo Glass in the Grass, The 0:50 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Infanta Marina 0:58 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Invective Against Swans 1:12 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Life Is Motion 0:41 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
The Load of Sugar Cane 0:48 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Lulu Gay 1:04 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Meditation 0:53 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
O, Florida, Venereal Soil 1:54 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Outside the Hospital 1:25 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage 1:40 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Peter Quince at the Clavier 3:30 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Phases 2:07 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
The Place of the Solitaires 1:05 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Plowing on Sunday 1:08 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
The Snow Man 1:12 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Song 'There are great things doing' 0:36 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Tattoo 0:53 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Tea 0:42 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Theory 0:47 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 3:26 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
To the Roaring Wind 0:33 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
Valley Candle 0:43 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)
The Wind Shifts 1:01 Read by Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010)

Reviews


(4 stars)

Wallace Stevens is one of the few modern poets in librivox. My favorite poem of his is The Snowman, which is included in this collection. Wallace's language is playful and and at times the sound of certain syllables is enough. The poems that stood out to me were the ones I was already familiar with. I pretty much tuned out the rest, since they made little sense to me and from the sound of it maybe the reader felt like that too. I recommend starting with the Emperor of Ice Cream. It is read with a lot of enthusiasm.

Free Listens Review


(5 stars)

Alan Davis-Drake is a professional-sounding reader. He reads the words carefully, with an ear for pauses and emphasis. I particularly reccomend "The Emperor of Ice-Cream." For a review of this poem, along with other reviews of free audiobooks, see www.freelistens.blogspot.com