Wallace Stevens: Poems Lesson Plan

Voices and Visions

Kind of Activity:

Mixed Media

Objective:

Students will become familiar with Stevens's biography and how his unusual path to poetry affected his writing.

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.9

Structure:

Compared to his contemporaries, Wallace Stevens's poetry career had a much different (and less conventional) trajectory. He worked full-time as a successful lawyer and businessman and wrote most of his major works after the age of 40. As such, an understanding of Stevens's biography is important to understanding the content of his poetry.

Show students the 60 minute documentary on Stevens from the Voices and Visions series, which was...