The poetry of Wallace Stevens has been the single greatest help to me in living my life. He taught me to see the world “cleansed of its stiff and stubborn man-locked set.” He taught me to apprehend the deeper mystery that is Reality, and to quote Stevens, to see “how much of what he saw he never saw at all.” He taught me to understand that Reality is not a solid but, perhaps, “a shade that traverses a dust/a force that traverses a shade.” He taught me to be at peace in the world and I will forever be in his debt.
