American poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a virtuoso of language, a master of rhyme and verbal music, of gay and thoughtful rhythms, and of precise and exotic diction.

Wallace Stevens was a successful lawyer and businessman, as well as an important poet. But too much has been made of the combination of esthete and businessman in him. Poetry for him was an irresistible urge ("one writes poetry because one must"), whereas business success was largely a means to attain the independence and privacy he needed for his poetry. He was from the start a poet's poet, a brilliant craftsman, but general critical acclaim came slowly. His early verse shows the influence of the French symbolists--the romantic skepticism, irony, dandified wit, and self-deprecation of Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Jules Laforgue. Stevens stood apart from groups, but he shared the imagists' devotion to concrete images and...