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Friday, May 7, 2021

Wallace Stevens, peripatetic Jamesian

I've always admired Stevens' peripatetic working routine (his day job was at Hartford Insurance Co.)...
"Wallace Stevens in his forties, living in Hartford, Connecticut, hewed to a productive routine. He rose at six, read for two hours, and walked another hour-three miles-to work. He dictated poems to his secretary. He ate no lunch; at noon he walked for another hour, often to an art gallery. He walked home from work-another hour. After dinner he retired to his study; he went to bed at nine. On Sundays, he walked in the park. I don't know what he did on Saturdays. Perhaps he exchanged a few words with his wife, who posed for the Liberty dime. (One would rather read these people, or lead their lives, than be their wives." Annie Dillard, The Writing Life 
Annie Dillard is (James, Emerson, Thoreau) biographer Robert Richardson's widow, btw
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Wallace Stevens and William James: The Poetics of Pure Experience

Richard Poirier, Poetry and Pragmatism


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