"'Hence, unpleasant as it is to record such a conclusion, the very remarkable work of Wallace Stevens cannot endure,' wrote Percy Hutchison, the late poetry editor of The New York Times.
Mr. Hutchison had just reviewed the new edition of the poet's Harmonium. That was in 1931, eight years after the volume first appeared. The poetry editor described the poems as closest to pure poetry. He explained that such works depended for their effectiveness on the rhythms and tonal values of words used with only the remotest link to ideational content.
He remarked that the poems were 'stunts' in which rhythms, vowels and consonants were substituted for musical notes. But this achievement is not poetry, Mr. Hutchison said before adding: 'From one end of the book to the other there is not an idea that can vitally affect the mind, there is not a word that can arouse emotion.'
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In recent years [Stevens] felt a sense of imminent tragedy in the world, and to this situation a poet addresses himself, he said. "What he gets is not necessarily a solution but some defense against it," Mr. Stevens remarked.
In The Necessary Angel, a book of his essays published in 1951, the poet said: 'My final point, then, is that imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.'"
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