Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) is rightly regarded as one of the great poets of English-language modernism and should be mentioned alongside his contemporaries Thomas Stearns Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Marianne Moore. The impact of Wallace Stevens' poetry and thought has been immense. His contemporaries and later generations have measured themselves against him. Among the poets, Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery, and Thomas Lux, among many others, are notable. Leading American literary critics borrowed parts of their terminology from the works of Wallace Stevens. In the second half of the twentieth century, knowledge of Stevens' "dictionary" was almost a prerequisite for understanding postmodern literary theories. If today's reader overlooks all of this, which is possible, and engages with a few of Wallace Stevens' poems, they will discover a fascinating world of poetry.