Wallace Stevens is my favorite poet. Here is a brilliant short poem entitled “The Worms at Heaven’s Gate” from Harmonium:

Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour
Within our bellies, we her chariot.
Here is an eye. And here are, one by one,
The lashes of that eye and its white lid.
Here is the cheek on which that lid declined,
And, finger after finger, here, the hand,
The genius of that cheek. Here are the lips,
The bundle of the body and the feet.

* * * * * *

Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was a corporate lawyer who became vice-president of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in Hartford, Connecticut. It’s rare to find poets today who have day jobs outside academia or the “creative writing industry”. I think that’s a shame. In addition to poetry, Stevens wrote essays - see The Necessary Angel (Essays on Reality and the Imagination). If you want to read his work, I recommend “Wallace Stevens - Collected Poetry and Prose”, published by the Library of America. This book contains all of his poetry, essays, letters and prose (there’s even a short piece on surety and fidelity claims).

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