Charles Altieri is Stageberg Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects, also from Cornell, and Postmodernisms Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts.

Altieri provides the most authoritative treatment of Stevens in more than a decade.... He combines aesthetics and philosophy in a rigorous manner that is nonetheless resolutely literary. Wisely eschewing a commentary on all of Stevens's poems, Altieri extracts original interpretive insights from close reading, as seen in his discernment, in 'Farewell to Florida,' of a flight from the female that is as much wishful thinking as renunciation, and a reading of 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' in which he emphasizes how the different perspectives 'fuse' over the disjunction emphasized by critics such as Harold Bloom. Altieri's detailed explication... reveals him as a dazzling reader of this difficult poet. Summing Up: Highly recommended.(Choice)

• 1. Philosophical Poetry and the Demands of Modernity2. Harmonium as a Modernist Text3. "Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds": The Parts Negation Played in Developing a New Poetic4. How Stevens Uses the Grammar of As5. Aspectual Thinking6. Stevens's Tragic Mode: Why the Angel Must Disappear in “Angel Surrounded by Paysans”7. Aspect- Seeing and Its Implications in The RockNotesBibliographyIndex

Charles Altieri is Stageberg Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects, also from Cornell, and Postmodernisms Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts.

Altieri provides the most authoritative treatment of Stevens in more than a decade.... He combines aesthetics and philosophy in a rigorous manner that is nonetheless resolutely literary. Wisely eschewing a commentary on all of Stevens's poems, Altieri extracts original interpretive insights from close reading, as seen in his discernment, in 'Farewell to Florida,' of a flight from the female that is as much wishful thinking as renunciation, and a reading of 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' in which he emphasizes how the different perspectives 'fuse' over the disjunction emphasized by critics such as Harold Bloom. Altieri's detailed explication... reveals him as a dazzling reader of this difficult poet. Summing Up: Highly recommended.(Choice)

• 1. Philosophical Poetry and the Demands of Modernity2. Harmonium as a Modernist Text3. "Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds": The Parts Negation Played in Developing a New Poetic4. How Stevens Uses the Grammar of As5. Aspectual Thinking6. Stevens's Tragic Mode: Why the Angel Must Disappear in “Angel Surrounded by Paysans”7. Aspect- Seeing and Its Implications in The RockNotesBibliographyIndex

Charles Altieri is Stageberg Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects, also from Cornell, and Postmodernisms Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts.

Altieri provides the most authoritative treatment of Stevens in more than a decade.... He combines aesthetics and philosophy in a rigorous manner that is nonetheless resolutely literary. Wisely eschewing a commentary on all of Stevens's poems, Altieri extracts original interpretive insights from close reading, as seen in his discernment, in 'Farewell to Florida,' of a flight from the female that is as much wishful thinking as renunciation, and a reading of 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' in which he emphasizes how the different perspectives 'fuse' over the disjunction emphasized by critics such as Harold Bloom. Altieri's detailed explication... reveals him as a dazzling reader of this difficult poet. Summing Up: Highly recommended.(Choice)

• 1. Philosophical Poetry and the Demands of Modernity2. Harmonium as a Modernist Text3. "Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds": The Parts Negation Played in Developing a New Poetic4. How Stevens Uses the Grammar of As5. Aspectual Thinking6. Stevens's Tragic Mode: Why the Angel Must Disappear in “Angel Surrounded by Paysans”7. Aspect- Seeing and Its Implications in The RockNotesBibliographyIndex