Wallace Stevens and Literary Canons by John Timberman Newcomb This revealing study traces the mechanism of literary evaluation by which the work of Wallace Stevens became a central and revered part of the treasury of modern American poetry. It is a study of literary canonization, and though focused only upon Stevens, it sheds a strong ray of light upon the processes of canon formation operating in twentieth-century America. Canonization is a phenomenon of literary culture. This analysis of how a writer advanced to the modern poetic canon is not only a study in literary criticism but also an examination of other types of literary enterprise-anthologies, textbooks, the work of other writers, the evaluations and decisions of publishers-that act and react in the formation of the canon. This study shows also how historical, ideological, and aesthetic factors figure into the literary equation that governs canon formation. Most recent biographical studies of Stevens offer a traditional view...