{"id":{"repo_id":"montana","oai_identifier":"oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-2191"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/montana/oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-2191","repository":{"repo_id":"montana","name":"University of Montana","base_url":"https://scholarworks.umt.edu/do/oai/"},"display":{"title":"Wallace Stevens's \"An Ordinary Evening in New Haven\": A Form of Farewell","abstract":"My thesis paper explores Wallace Stevens’s poem “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” contextually. Stevens has long been regarded as monotonous in his themes. Critics, including Bloom, have studied “An Ordinary Evening” as a poem that struggles to unite the real with the imagination. They trace his ideas of reality to Emerson, Coleridge, and Whitman, among others, through the use of intertextual analysis based on structure and allusions. Others, such as Vendler, focus on his use of minimalism to study the psychology of the author. A contextual study of “An Ordinary Evening” reveals that the poem is about how to cope with the emotions caused by loss, monotony of life, and disillusionment, a previously unexplored subject in Stevens. I look at the meaning of the motifs from the pressure of the poem and show how the motifs connect to Wordsworth’s, Baudelaire’s, and Whitman’s grief poems. I, then, explore how Stevens recommends coping with anguish by allowing the object to lose meaning and then engaging the imagination to create a new way of seeing the object. I show how Stevens advocates finding comfort in a state of anguish by using the flux of reality to momentarily allow the real and unreal to become one.","abstract_html":"My thesis paper explores Wallace Stevens’s poem “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” contextually. Stevens has long been regarded as monotonous in his themes. Critics, including Bloom, have studied “An Ordinary Evening” as a poem that struggles to unite the real with the imagination. They trace his ideas of reality to Emerson, Coleridge, and Whitman, among others, through the use of intertextual analysis based on structure and allusions. Others, such as Vendler, focus on his use of minimalism to study the psychology of the author. A contextual study of “An Ordinary Evening” reveals that the poem is about how to cope with the emotions caused by loss, monotony of life, and disillusionment, a previously unexplored subject in Stevens. I look at the meaning of the motifs from the pressure of the poem and show how the motifs connect to Wordsworth’s, Baudelaire’s, and Whitman’s grief poems. I, then, explore how Stevens recommends coping with anguish by allowing the object to lose meaning and then engaging the imagination to create a new way of seeing the object. I show how Stevens advocates finding comfort in a state of anguish by using the flux of reality to momentarily allow the real and unreal to become one.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Lamb, Brenda Y."],"institution":"University of Montana","degree_name":"Master of Arts (MA)","degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2008,"date_issued":"2008-01-01T08:00:00Z","date_published":"2008-01-01T08:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:11:58Z","subjects":["An Ordinary Evening","Despair","Farewell","Grief","Tintern Abbey","Wallace Stevens","Wordsworth"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1172","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Lamb, Brenda Y."]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["University of Montana"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis - Campus Access Only"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Arts (MA)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["An Ordinary Evening","Despair","Farewell","Grief","Tintern Abbey","Wallace Stevens","Wordsworth"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1172"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["My thesis paper explores Wallace Stevens’s poem “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” contextually. Stevens has long been regarded as monotonous in his themes. Critics, including Bloom, have studied “An Ordinary Evening” as a poem that struggles to unite the real with the imagination. They trace his ideas of reality to Emerson, Coleridge, and Whitman, among others, through the use of intertextual analysis based on structure and allusions. Others, such as Vendler, focus on his use of minimalism to study the psychology of the author. A contextual study of “An Ordinary Evening” reveals that the poem is about how to cope with the emotions caused by loss, monotony of life, and disillusionment, a previously unexplored subject in Stevens. I look at the meaning of the motifs from the pressure of the poem and show how the motifs connect to Wordsworth’s, Baudelaire’s, and Whitman’s grief poems. I, then, explore how Stevens recommends coping with anguish by allowing the object to lose meaning and then engaging the imagination to create a new way of seeing the object. I show how Stevens advocates finding comfort in a state of anguish by using the flux of reality to momentarily allow the real and unreal to become one."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Wallace Stevens's \"An Ordinary Evening in New Haven\": A Form of Farewell"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:creator":["Lamb, Brenda Y."],"dc:description.abstract":["My thesis paper explores Wallace Stevens’s poem “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” contextually. Stevens has long been regarded as monotonous in his themes. Critics, including Bloom, have studied “An Ordinary Evening” as a poem that struggles to unite the real with the imagination. They trace his ideas of reality to Emerson, Coleridge, and Whitman, among others, through the use of intertextual analysis based on structure and allusions. Others, such as Vendler, focus on his use of minimalism to study the psychology of the author. A contextual study of “An Ordinary Evening” reveals that the poem is about how to cope with the emotions caused by loss, monotony of life, and disillusionment, a previously unexplored subject in Stevens. I look at the meaning of the motifs from the pressure of the poem and show how the motifs connect to Wordsworth’s, Baudelaire’s, and Whitman’s grief poems. I, then, explore how Stevens recommends coping with anguish by allowing the object to lose meaning and then engaging the imagination to create a new way of seeing the object. I show how Stevens advocates finding comfort in a state of anguish by using the flux of reality to momentarily allow the real and unreal to become one."],"dc:identifier":["https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1172"],"dc:publisher":["University of Montana"],"dc:subject":["An Ordinary Evening","Despair","Farewell","Grief","Tintern Abbey","Wallace Stevens","Wordsworth"],"dc:title":["Wallace Stevens's \"An Ordinary Evening in New Haven\": A Form of Farewell"],"dc:type":["Thesis - Campus Access Only"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master of Arts (MA)"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T03:11:58Z"}