Wallace Stevens is buried in Cedar Hill
Cemetery, Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA.
Gravestone of Wallace Stevens (in the foregound)
Photograph by Linda Kazel
N.B. the shells and other
trinkets on top of the gravestone have been left by admirers.
Stevens was born in Reading in Pennsylvania and was educated at Harvard
University and at the New York Law School. Between 1916-1955 Stevens worked as a lawyer for the Hartford
Accident and Indemnity Company where he later rose to the rank of Vice-President in
1934.
He frequently composed poems whilst walking the 2 miles from his
home at 118, Westerly Terrace to his office at 690, Asylum Avenue.
Stevens was in his forties when his first collection of poetry Harmonium
was published. His other collections include: The Man with the Blue
Guitar (1937), Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (1942) and
The Auroras of Autumn (1950). His collected poems appeared in 1954 -
the year before his death.
Unlike his friend William Carlos Williams
whose poems were largely about concrete things - Stevens' poems
were often meditations about ideas themselves. He only began to receive
recognition shortly before he died. However, he is now widely regarded
as one of the foremost US poets of the 20th century - credited with
creating a body of highly-wrought,
enigmatic poetry.
He died on August 2nd 1955 in St Francis Hospital, Hartford.
Stevens was survived by his wife and his daughter Holly; Holly later edited his letters for publication.
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