Three voices of Wallace Stevens

Abstract

Wallace Stevens, aware of the orality and aurality of poetry, understood that poetry consists of the poet's persona communicating with an audience. Stevens spoke in a variety of poetic voices throughout his career, the three most obvious or strongest being that of the modernist, the philosopher, and the rabbi-priest. These three personae represent reactions to the "pressure of reality" and express Stevens's search for an object of belief in an age of disbelief. The modernist persona expresses the fear, anxiety, and divided consciousness of the modern era. Stevens's philosopher responds to the chaos of modernism by attempting to order and systematize his reality. Finally, the voice of the rabbi-priest reveals someone who is accepting of change and who offers provisional answers to difficult questions. All three voices are present in Stevens's earliest writing, even if only in incipient forms. These three then develop separately from but also in reaction to each other.