Of Modern Poetry Themes

"Of Modern Poetry" is about one thing: what poetry is supposed to be doing in the modern age. For that reason, Stevens uses the phrase "has to" quite a lot in this poem. The thing is sort of like a...

You can't really talk about Wallace Stevens without talking about spirituality. Whenever the speaker of "Of Modern Poetry" says that modern poetry has to find something that's good enough ("will su...

Where there's lack of spiritual fulfillment, you're almost always going to find dissatisfaction. After all, why would Stevens write a poem about finding what's "good enough" in life if there wasn't...

When it all comes down to it, Wallace Stevens doesn't want to write about beautiful things like flowers and love. He wants to write about how human consciousness goes about finding beauty in the wo...