More than ever there is a feeling that anything not a part of politics, not a part of sociology and not in a general way a phase of mass thinking has any right to exist.\u00a0 What is going on in the world now is an extraordinary manipulation of the masses.\u00a0 The manipulating forces are not apparent.\u00a0 It can hardly be said that the politicians are manipulating forces because, as the great strikes demonstrate, the forces behind the strikes are defiant of the politicians.\u00a0 The mechanism for this sort of thing has been perfected beyond belief\u2026We have never exploited workers as they have been exploited elsewhere; it is still true I think that the man at the very bottom feels that there is a chance for him to be the man at the top.<\/em><\/p>\nAlthough the beginning portion of this message seems altruistic in that he upholds the importance of freethinking, the concluding sentences reveal his political opinions. \u00a0This paragraph, written by Stevens himself, provides a portal into the very mind of this poet and insurance executive.\u00a0 From the passage above, what attitude does Stevens hold toward the lower class? Clearly he sees the lower class as exploited, yet it is obvious that he does not see this exploitation as bad.\u00a0 In fact, he himself does not believe that there is a chance for the man at the very bottom to be at the very top, he just believes a man at the very bottom feels<\/i> that there is a chance for him at the very top.\u00a0 Perhaps Stevens believes that the poor will always think there is a chance for success, even if success is only a hope.\u00a0 How does this dark ideology appear coming from an insurance vice-president?\u00a0 Written in confidence to his close friend, this letter and the messages contained in it reveal a lot about his political opinions and his feelings toward the portrayal of his work in his about-to-be published book.<\/p>\n
These letters, however, are just two in a series of around seven where both the realities of war in England and The United States are evident.\u00a0 Certainly Stevens valued his dear friends opinion on the artistic appearance of his newly published book, while also hoping to receive some original artwork from Guthrie.\u00a0 It is also possible, however, that these letters reveal a lesser-known side of Stevens; Stevens as an insurance executive.\u00a0 Nonetheless, these letters are a classic example of documents preserved by the Watkinson Library in which a wealth of knowledge can be extracted to provide a richer understanding of modern poetry; specifically, the man behind the poems of, Hartford\u2019s own, Wallace Stevens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Posted by Walter Jongbloed ’16, for Prof. David Rosen’s course, “Modern Poetry”] An Exchange of Letters between James Guthrie and Wallace Stevens: June 25, 1945 \u2013 Nov 23, 1945 Wallace Stevens, while living and working in Hartford CT, remained in contact with James Guthrie, founder of the British publishing company Pear Tree Press.\u00a0 Guthrie was, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Wallace Stevens, while living and working in Hartford CT, remained in contact with James Guthrie, founder of the British publishing company Pear Tree Press.\u00a0 Guthrie was, aside from a publisher, an artist, endeavoring in prints and engravings.\u00a0 The letters found in the Watkinson Library do not indicate how this interesting relationship began; however, between June 25, 1945 and November 23, 1945 these two men shared personal and profession aspects of their lives.\u00a0 With World War II in progress between these dates, one can also witness the effect the War had on Stevens, or at least the feelings he was willing to write in his letters.\u00a0 This series of letters reveal that both Guthrie and Stevens cared, in a professional sense, about the artistic work the other was producing.\u00a0 In the first letter, however, dated June 25, 1945, Stevens reveals his desire for Guthrie to mail him one of his drawings.\u00a0 Perhaps of more interest, though, Stevens reveals in detail the effect World War II was having on Hartford, CT.\u00a0 He writes:<\/p>\n