The Collected Poems: The Corrected Edition

Resumen del libro

The Collected Poems-the definitive collection from the man Harold Bloom has called "the best and most representative American poet"-was originally published by Knopf in 1954. Because the book was rushed into print to coincide with Stevens's 75th birthday, Knopf relied on recent printings of Stevens' other titles, which had accumulated many errors through years of resetting and reprinting. The result was a collection with errors in wording, punctuation, and spelling, along with missing stanza breaks, misplaced lines, and incorrect titles-and there was even an entire poem left out by accident. Some of the mistakes had significant effects on meaning: "Sour wine to warm him" became "Sour wine to warn him," for instance, and one book of Stevens criticism spent two pages discussing the image of an angel "Serenely gazing at the violent abyss," when it should have been "violet." Stevens scholars John Serio and Christopher Beyers have painstakingly compared multiple versions of all the poems, identifying more than 150 corrections. Their Note on the Text explains the reasons for the new edition, and an Appendix at the back offers a succinct list of changes made.

Biografía del autor

(Reading, Pensilvania, 1879 - Hartford, Connecticut, 1955) es uno de los grandes poetas norteamericanos contemporáneos, adscrito como T. S. Eliot al movimiento vanguardista de su país. Estudió en Harvard y en Nueva York, donde logró el título de abogado que le permitió abandonar el periodismo y ganarse la vida en los servicios jurídicos de varias aseguradoras. Poeta tardío, la mayor parte de su obra la escribió con más de cincuenta años. El año de su muerte recibió el Premio Pulitzer de Literatura. Estudiosos como Harold Bloom lo han reconocido como uno de los grandes poetas del siglo xx. Gran defensor de la imaginación como motor principal de la vida y de las ideas, su pasión por la belleza le llevó a ser acusado de hedonista y decadente , adjetivos que el tiempo ha ido borrando de su biografía.