By examining a full range of Wallace Stevens's writing in the context of American political and intellectual history, this study reveals him as a poet who was not only aware of current events, but whose work was often inspired by those events.
Offering an account of 40 years of American poetry, the author argues that the work of Robert Lowell and those who followed his reflective style should not now be viewed as a breakthrough narrative, due to changing concepts of what constitutes modernism and the over-use of the term post-modern .