Wallace Stevens matters because he picked up the fallen standard of Walt Whitman (who had picked up the fallen standard of Dante) and endeavored to write a Commedia for his time and place.
His poetry as a whole (the "whole Harmonium"), though often difficult, stands next to Leaves of Grass as American scripture. It is, perhaps, commentary on Whitman in many ways, but commentary of such aesthetic strength that it achieved canonicity. Not bad for an insurance lawyer from Reading, Pa.
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