Wallace Stevens and the Poetry We No Longer Write

Paul D. Wilke
Jul 22
13 min read

Updated: Aug 4

Wallace Stevens: Imagination vs. Reality

I came across something by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) that got me thinking about poetry. It's from an old 1941 lecture he gave at Princeton titled "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words." In it, Stevens argued that poets use imagination to counter the relentless and demoralizing pressures of reality. For him, imagination is crucial to our psychological well-being. It represents our power to frame base reality into something bearable and meaningful.

The poet's role, in his words, is as "the orator of the imagination," whose nearly impossible task is to use imagination to create what he called "Supreme Fictions" that fill the void left by the retreat of traditional sources of meaning, such as religion and ideology.

The way Stevens saw it, reality pushes in relentlessly from the outside while imagination doggedly pushes back to keep it from overwhelming us. This makes it seem as if it's an either-or choice: face a cold, indifferent reality or anesthetize ourselves with escapism. But it's not so simple.

Reality and imagination shape each other in an ongoing dialogue, where one always influences the other. Imagination (art) is vital. It's what expresses the zeitgeist of an age. It's what shapes and defines culture, after all, while reality—things like war, disease, political chaos, and economic uncertainty—determines the limits and varieties of artistic expression. The tension between the two never disappears. It's always like this and always will be.

He's not the first to say something like this. Nietzsche wrote, "Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth." Stevens would have agreed. Embracing things as they are in life, with all the violence, horror, indifference, and boredom, is spiritually debilitating.

People seek refuge in a world that feels like it's spiraling out of control. The disenchanted life is too hard to bear. Visual art, fiction, music, and, yes, even poetry, are those refuges.

Think of imagination as a well, one that is deep or shallow, depending on the wealth or poverty of life experience one has accrued. The more diverse, the better; it's what adds freshness, originality, and variety to poetry as a discipline. For Stevens, the deeper the well, the more powerful the fictions we draw from it.

The Poet and the World

None of this is new. The steady drumbeat of bad news Stevens' generation heard on the radio has given way to doom-scrolling: same dread, different medium.

Stevens' views on poetry fascinate me all the more because, outside academia, they seem forgotten. I don't say this to dismiss him, quite the contrary. Reading Stevens today, a century later, as we distract ourselves into ever-smaller and more alienated fragments, is to hearken back to a very different time when our greatest poets still had grand philosophical ambitions for their craft and were still bold enough to express them.

Maybe that's the missing piece for me. Maybe this is why I struggle with today's poetry: so much of it feels unambitious, uninspired, and hermetic. Or trivial, I guess that's the single word I'm looking for that captures the feeble spirit of our poetic age. While I don't agree with everything Stevens had to say, it's refreshing to read someone who at least tried to articulate a coherent worldview that won't fit on a bumper sticker.

He had the education to do so. Stevens was both book smart and world-wise, a reminder that ambitious poets must read widely and live fully. These are the cornerstones needed to construct a personal philosophy for one's art, to find a voice, or have a vision, however you want to frame it. Your muse, she won't work for free; you must feed her before she'll sing for you.

Stevens did this, and then some. He knew his Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. One of his greatest philosophical influences was his former college professor, none other than George Santayana, a giant of philosophy from the early 20th century.

Yet he was also successful in the real world, becoming a lawyer and later an executive with an insurance company. However, it wasn't all winning. He encountered disappointments: for example, his marriage was a very unhappy one. All of this book learning and real-life experience helped him develop a poetic vision and voice.

And not many poets can say they got their ass kicked by Ernest Hemingway.

I might add that other poets whose work has endured also emphasize the importance of diverse experiences. Jack Gilbert's most moving stuff came when he was grieving the death of his wife. Charles Bukowski's post office job, battles with booze and women, and embrace of decadence certainly gave him a distinct voice and vision. Or consider a more contemporary example, someone like Andrea Gibson, who recently passed from cancer. Gibson's later poems are a deeply humane and moving reflection on mortality.

We still read these today and will continue to do so in another 50 years because they tackle recurring themes that affect every generation.

So yes, life experience and books matter, perhaps far more than we'd like to admit.

Ok, and how do we translate all of this into something lasting, into what Stevens called a 'supreme fiction,' by which he meant a kind of modern myth to replace what we've lost?

How do we write for the ages?

Half Past Three (The Poet), Marc Chagall - 1911

What Makes a Supreme Fiction?

Stevens laid this all out in a 1942 lyrical masterpiece called "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." In this work, we find Stevens at his most challenging, using simple language to explore abstract philosophical ideas. It's the kind of deep poetry that proves its own thesis, demanding to be read and reread.

According to him, a "supreme fiction" has three interconnected requirements: it must be abstract; it must change, and it must give pleasure.

First, it must be abstract. That doesn't mean it's vague or meaningless; it just doesn't hand over all the answers, nor should it be tied to fixed ideologies, dogmas, or journalistic literalism.

Instead, it should operate on a symbolic or metaphorical level, using everyday, concrete language to hint at deeper, open-ended truths. In other words, poets use language to transcend language to reveal deeper meanings. A great poem creates a space where multiple meanings can coexist.

Abstraction lets the poem speak beyond its moment, reaching out to different readers across different times. A poem that is too specific or obvious might connect in the short term, but it'll soon be exhausted. Once you've "gotten it," there's nothing left. It's a single-serving experience.

Second, "it must change." Stevens wasn't only referring to the evolution of the poem itself, though that's part of it. He meant that supreme fictions must be flexible and open to reinterpretation. The most enduring poems will be those most responsive to the shifting needs of each generation. The imagination, after all, isn't static. As reality changes, so too must the myths we construct to make sense of it. A supreme fiction can't become dogma or a dead metaphor. It must adapt and reassert itself in new language and imagery.

This, by the way, is why we still read Poe, Dickinson, and Stevens, and not Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Edwin Markham, or John Greenleaf Whittier, who were quite popular in their times but are now almost completely forgotten. They wrote sentimental verse tailored to the tastes and issues of their time, especially the moralizing middle-class audiences of Victorian and Edwardian cultures. Their popularity was real, but rooted in a narrow cultural moment that didn't last. They resonated for these reasons, as the Instapoets do in ours.

They're like pretty annual flowers, lovely for a moment, but gone with the season.

The final element of the supreme fiction is something many poets forget: poetry should bring pleasure to the reader. Not frustration. Not just bafflement. But simple pleasure, which is that sense of resonance we get when something meaningful hits us. The reader should derive something meaningful from the experience. This brings us full circle back to Stevens. Poetry isn't a decoration. It's a way to live a fuller life.

I would add one more thing to Steven's list: An artist needs to have something to say: a vision, a message, a purpose, a reason for saying what they're saying. And truly, is an artist an artist if they don't have a vision? A trained technician, perhaps, a gifted specialist, sure, but not an artist, not without a vision for their art and something non-trivial to say. Without vision, an artist is a dabbler or hobbyist who copies the styles and aesthetics of others to create unoriginal and uninspiring work. Andrea Gibson had something to say. So did Stevens, Gilbert, and even Bukowski in his chaotic way.

Self Portrait with Muse (Dream), Marc Chagall - 1917-1918

The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Problem

As the arts become increasingly professionalized and institutionalized, they become more inaccessible to the broader public. This is especially true in poetry, which over the last fifty years has become dominated by specialists and MFA graduates who settle into careers teaching creative writing courses. They tend to be highly educated, progressive, and cosmopolitan, subscribing to The New Yorker, teaching workshops, and leading comfortable, respectable lives, and the poetry they write reflects just that.

There's nothing wrong with this, I guess. We all seek professional stability and respectability, and we all make compromises to attain those. The issue for poetry is that we've ended up with a homogenized class of cultured elites who come from a tiny sliver of the population. For all the celebration of diversity and the recentering of "marginalized voices," poetry isn't all that diverse.

Whitman didn't have an MFA. Neither did Frost. Stevens settled insurance claims. Bukowski drank a lot but wrote even more. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. I could go on. That kind of professional diversity is lacking today, and poetry is poorer for it.

One insider who's spoken candidly about this trend is Tony Hoagland, an accomplished poet well-known in the community. He has penned several fascinating essays that address issues with contemporary poetry. This gives him an insider's perspective that I don't have. I would describe him as a staunch defender of poetry, but not a blindly uncritical one.

I found his insights helpful for someone like me looking in from the outside and trying to figure out why I struggle so much to enjoy today's poetry. He wrote, "Much contemporary poetry seems written with a dim and anxious awareness of its marginal status in American culture, but the result, paradoxically, has been an increase in our overall aesthetic insularity." (Hoagland)

It's a good point. I read this to mean that poetry is trapped in a self-reinforcing and self-defeating cycle of marginalization and insularity. The truth is, poetry almost entirely vanishes from the culture once we turn off our screens. Poets often end up writing for other poets because they are the only audience. They huddle like penguins in a blizzard, alienated from the wider culture but finding warmth and comfort with one another.

I don't blame them. Poems, both those that move us and those we write and share, are deeply personal expressions of vulnerability. Who wants to share something with that mass of the public that can't even be bothered to pick up a book anymore, let alone read a poem? I get it.

But it comes at a price, as Hoagland's mention of that "overall aesthetic insularity" implies. When poets write only for each other, a narrow ecosystem of aesthetics emerges that caters only to a tiny subset of the population. It becomes an exclusive subculture, and one where its members are incentivized to keep it that way.

You see this all the time. The poets who win lofty prizes are all poets writing for other poets. It's assumed that no one else will read them (and too often, they're right), and so they don't try to connect with a broader audience.

But this isn't the kind of "supreme fiction" that Stevens envisioned. Why? Because it lacks what matters most: vision, ambition, and the capacity to give real pleasure to thoughtful readers like me, who are not allergic to difficulty.

But it must resonate, or we'll look elsewhere for something that does.

A Wheatfield on a Summer's Afternoon, Marc Chagall - 1942

The Reading Crisis

An often-overlooked point in Stevens' vision is one so obvious we often forget to mention it: poetry must remain grounded in reality. Otherwise, it becomes inscrutable, disconnected Dada that is applauded in cloistered literary circles as avant-garde but is off-putting to the wider reading public that might otherwise be more open to poetry.

Stevens describes a grounding in reality as "fundamental," if any "supreme fiction" of poetry is to achieve its humble task of helping people to live their lives. Not just poets and specialists, but for any thoughtful person willing to slow down and engage.

This is the other sobering aspect of poetry today, and it's not all the fault of the professional poets.

Alas, the educated reading public has been in a slow but steady decline for decades. The stats back this up. Less than half of Americans (48.5%) read a book for pleasure in a given year.

It gets worse: only 9.2% have read any poems in the last twelve months. We're not talking about regular poetry readers, but anyone who reported reading a single poem in the last year. If we focus only on true fans who enjoy poetry all the time and exclude those who might have accidentally bumped into a few Rupi Kaur poems on Instagram in the last few months, that 9.2% no doubt drops further.

In any case, a slight majority of Americans already don't read at all. Let's call them the bibliophobes. They're busy, busy, busy. The kids have soccer. Work is hard. The dog ate my homework. Whatever... they're not going to pick up a book. For them, poetry exists out there somewhere, in theory, like Antarctica: technically real, but not something they'll ever experience.

And as they'll never visit Antarctica, they will never choose poetry for their leisure time. Never. The bibliophobes represent the emerging aliterati class - people who can read but don't - a demographic that gains converts every day, including many former readers.

Even among dedicated readers, the outlook for poetry is bleak. Only a small portion of those who read anything (at least one paltry book a year!) are engaging with poetry. The gap between general readers and poetry readers has always been vast, and always will be. The trendlines promise more of the same, and perhaps even an acceleration as AI plays a more colonizing role in our mental lives.

Even if poetry isn't dead (as we're told every few years), it's not leading the charge in any cultural revolutions either.

But that's fine, I guess, if it still gives some of us the imaginative ammunition we need to keep reality at bay. That's what it does for me, anyway, at least in those vanishingly rare occasions when I find something that moves me.

That's why I've written this: because great poetry, when it hits, is as sublime as the best music, film, or art. If you've been moved to tears or had your breath taken away by a work of art, as I often have, you understand what I'm talking about. You're also a true believer in supreme fictions, whether you call it that or not.

It's just so damn hard to find it nowadays.

Instapoetry and the Mass Market

In one sense, we're living in a golden age of poetry. Defenders will rightly tell you there's never been more of it. Anyone can self-publish, and many do, including me, on occasion.

Gatekeepers still exist, but they are less influential these days. We can all be poets now, with the entire world as our potential audience. In general, I'm all for amateurs giving poetry a shot. But it's a golden age of mediocrity. Call it the result of digital democratization, which creates a kind of mass poetry best suited for online audiences with short attention spans.

The "reality" of the Internet has determined how poetic imagination manifests itself online. The most successful adaptation of poetry to the digital era so far is Instapoetry, pioneered by savvy online entrepreneurs like Rupi Kaur, who has built a lucrative brand out of writing short poems that are little more than daily affirmations with random line breaks to give them a poetic appearance.

Read enough of this stuff, and you'll soon see the problem: much of it is quite terrible. It is ridden with self-help cliches and therapy-speak that gets quickly consumed and almost immediately forgotten, like a bag of truck stop potato chips.

The cruel irony is that this democratization, while admirable in principle for making poetry more accessible, may also be what's killing it. The very qualities that make poetry great, like imagination, ambiguity, and rhythm, are often flattened in the rush to be digestible and viral.

Mass poetry, by definition, tends toward the underwhelming. But perhaps the more insidious threat to poetry today isn't just aesthetic dilution. It's the evaporation of the kind of non-screen life experience that great poetry needs to grow from in the first place.

Lovers Under Lillies, Marc Chagall - 1922-1925

Experience Vampires and the End of Poetry

I would like to close by revisiting a label I used in passing in the recent Brave New World essay, in which I described the Internet as a kind of experience vampire. People who live online aren't making memories. They're not gaining valuable experiences, which are the raw materials needed to create what Stevens called a "supreme fiction."

Time passes, hours of content consumed daily, year after year, and decade after decade. All the while, experience vampires gorge on entire generations, leaving behind only a blur of consumed content.

Online life is a vicarious and impoverished one. It's that simple.

I contend that this is fatal to the project of writing poetry in the way Stevens describes. It'll be a shabby copy of something better.

I think this is where Stevens' vision begins to falter in a world so unlike the one he knew. He assumed a shared, unmediated reality as a common baseline. That's what he knew. Sadly, Stevens' vision of poetry as essential to human meaning-making may be an obsolete one.

The average person today is becoming more alienated from the direct experience of nature and the warmth of relationships. Suppose Stevens is right, and that experience is the most essential ingredient for the poet to mediate between imagination and reality. In that case, we're not in a good place. We're on a trajectory where the vicarious will increasingly triumph over the firsthand in everyone's lives.

Even worse, as AI becomes more sophisticated, people will continue outsourcing ever larger chunks of their thinking, including creative and critical thinking, to machines. And when everyone lives online, as many already do, where will the few remaining poets find an audience still capable of grappling with poetry not designed for a few fleeting seconds of distraction?

I'm talking about those who still haven't forgotten the reality of touch, the need for meaningful human contact, the richness of direct experience, the beauty of unmediated nature, and who still know the names of things because they've tasted them, touched them, looked them in the eye.

I suspect they're out there, alone, unseen, like ghosts whispering through the static.

In any case, time will sort it all out, one way or another, as it always does, and poetry will be there to shape whatever that future turns out to be.

I find this comforting.