The Poetry of Dasein: Martin Heidegger's Existential Phenomenology as an Interpretive Model for Wallace Stevens

Abstract

In his books The Later Poetry of Wallace Stevens, Thomas Hines says that the development of the middle and later poetry of Stevens can be profitably explained through comparisons with the phenomenological methods and concepts of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Wallace Stevens' poetry is notorious for its complexity and philosophical overtones. If Hines is correct, then one might be tempted to admit defeat and move on to another poet. Here, Price delves Heidegger's existential phenomenology as an interpretive model for Stevens.