Description: All of the glory that had broken on me Surrounded me and saw me through and through Although I had no idea how to name A power that engulfed me totally And turned my soul onto another road. --Book XVI, lines 700-704 Preludes is a soul's journey from infancy to adulthood--from the Ohio Valley to south Florida, from grade school to college in New England and travel abroad, and ultimately to a knowledge of its maker. The author is unabashedly and sometimes almost naively Romantic, and the poem shows both adoration of nature and the ultimate failure of such an obsession. The poem's...

Description:
When Weirton Steel was powerful and poured
Columns of smoke and fumes into the air
North of Martins Ferry in the valley
And orange water tumbled from its sluices
Into an umber river far below
I was a boy.

--Sonnet I, lines 1-6

The one hundred sonnets in this volume carry us beyond the authors boyhood into a voyage of adult concerns but also playfulness, love of art, and intimations of Paradise. They affirm in many ways a nobility Wallace Stevens thought was hard to find in contemporary poetry.