Born in 1879 in Reading, Pennsylvania, Wallace Stevens is best known as an inhabitant of Hartford, Connecticut. He lived in Hartford for almost forty years, until his death in 1955, and is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery. Stevens attended Harvard, and in 1904 received a law degree from New York Law School. Stevens worked briefly as a reporter for the New York Tribune, but the exposure to crime and despair proved to be too much for him, and he turned to practicing law.

Stevens married in 1909 and relocated with his wife in 1916 to Hartford. Their first year there, they lived at 594 Prospect Avenue, then spent seven years in an apartment at 210 Farmington Avenue, where Stevens wrote his first volume, Harmonium. In 1932, Stevens bought a 1920s Colonial at 118 Westerly Terrace, where he amassed a library of leather-bound books, collected art, and kept a wine cellar. He cared for his rose and peony beds, and the holly bush he planted in honor of his daughter, Holly.

For decades, Stevens worked at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, now the Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., eventually becoming vice president. Because he never learned to drive, walking became a central part of his daily life. He walked the two-mile route every day from his West End home to his office in Asylum Hill. He composed poems in his head while walking, and explained that he enjoyed matching the words in his head to the rhythm of his steps. The city of Hartford and its surroundings left a lasting mark on his work, as shown in these lines from "Of Hartford in a Purple Light":

"It is Hartford seen in a purple light.
A moment ago, light masculine,
Working, with big hands, on the town,
Arranged its heroic attitudes.
But as in an amour of women
Purple sets purple around. Look Mater,
See the river, the railroad, the cathedral..."

One of Stevens's favorites places to wander in Hartford was Elizabeth Park. With over one hundred acres of gardens, lawns, greenhouses, and a pond, the park appeared frequently in his poems, including "The Plain Sense of Things" which includes the lines:

"Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflection, leaves,
mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence"

Organized in June of 1995, the Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens is a non-profit organization that seeks to increase awareness of Stevens and his hometown through readings and events. They are currently seeking to create a two-mile, self-guided walking tour that will follow Stevens’s route from his home to his office. Featured along the walk will be thirteen granite markers inscribed with stanzas from Stevens’s poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." The poem includes the lines "O thin men of Haddam, / Why do you imagine golden birds?"--addressing the locals of Haddam, a small town outside Hartford.

Photo courtesy of Christine Palm