"Vendler is a commentator almost clairvoyant...Her book ought to be read, with care and gratitude, by every reader of Stevens, for no critic before her has understood so well his major poems."
--Harold Bloom, New York Times Book Review
Though Wallace Stevens' shorter poems are perhaps his best known, his longer poems, Helen Hennessy Vendler suggests in this book, deserve equal fame and equal consideration. Stevens' central theme--the worth of the imagination--remained with him all his life, and Mrs. Vendler...