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==Life and Career==
Stevens was born in [[Reading, Pennsylvania]] and attended [[Harvard University|Harvard]], after which he moved to [[New York City]] and briefly worked as a [[journalist]]. He then attended [[New York Law School]], graduating in [[1903]]. On a trip back to Reading in [[1904]], Stevens met Elsie Kachel Moll, whom he married
After working for several New York law firms from 1904 to [[1907]], Stevens was hired in [[1908]] as a [[bonding lawyer]] for an [[insurance]] firm. By [[1914]] he had become the vice-president of the New York Office of the Equitable Surety Company of [[St. Louis, Missouri]]. When this job was abolished as a result of mergers in [[1916]], he joined the home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and left New York City to live in [[Hartford, Connecticut|Hartford]], where he would remain the rest of his life. By [[1934]], he had been named vice-president of the company.
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Stevens considered the world and our perception of the world to be separate. We approach reality with a piecemeal understanding, putting together parts of the world in an attempt to make it seem coherent. To make sense of the world is to construct a worldview through an active exercise of the imagination.
Stevens was very much an [[atheist]],{{fn|2}} and his poetry has a strong atheistic undercurrent, as in "The Man with the Blue Guitar": "Poetry // Exceeding music must take the place / Of empty heaven and its hymns." But as with much else in Stevens, his atheism must not be taken in an ordinary sense, since for him all was transcendence.
Another occasional theme in Stevens's poetry is that of the hero and his place within the larger framework of war. An example of a part of Stevens' imagination that will not survive his time and place is his derogatory attitude towards people of African descent.
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*[http://www.wallacestevens.com/ The Wallace Stevens Society]
*[http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/124 Stevens' Academy Of American Poets page]
*[http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Stevens_W/Sunday.htm "Sunday Morning"] (online poem)
*[http://home.earthlink.net/~scofield99/data/W_Stevens_NotesSupreme.htm "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"] (online poem)
*[http://www.web-books.com/classics/Poetry/Anthology/Stevens_W/index.htm Web-books.com Poetry Anthology] (some online works by Stevens)
*[http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/wallace_stevens_2004_9.pdf Poemhunter.com ebooks] (free e-book (PDF format) with 35 poems by Stevens)
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