Late Stevens

B. J. Leggett

""If one no longer believes in God (as truth)," Wallace Stevens once wrote, "it is not possible merely to disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in something else. ... I say that one's final belief must be in a fiction." Stevens addressed the concept of a "supreme fiction" throughout much of his career, but many critics feel his poems never realized that concept beyond a theoretical possibility. B.J. Leggett argues that Stevens did indeed achieve the supreme fiction in his often overlooked late poems. To share in the poet's vision, though, Leggett finds that readers must understand the ingenious intertext that runs through this culminating body of work." "After three volumes of difficult and abstract poetry, Stevens, in the last five years of his life, reverted to a refreshingly personal and accessible style. Leggett closely examines The Rock, which is the closing section of...

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