The Wallace Stevens Society †

John N. Serio

THE SEEDS OF THE WALLACE STEVENS SOCIETY were planted in the late 1960s when William T. Ford, a librarian at the University of Chicago by day and a law student by night, started The Wallace Stevens Newsletter. Four issues of the eight-page newsletter appeared: Vol. 1.1 (Oct. 1969); Vol. 1.2 (April 1970); Vol. 2.1 (Oct. 1970); and Vol. 2.2 (April 1971). These usually contained one or two brief essays on Stevens’ poetry, book reviews, news about forthcoming events, abstracts of recent dissertations, a current bibliography, and poems paying tribute to Stevens. After completing his law degree in 1972, Ford moved to Los Angeles, but without a university connection, he could not continue the Newsletter.
     In 1975, soon after Holly Stevens sold her father’s letters, manuscripts, and library to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Ford received a phone call from Robert H. Deutsch, an English professor at California State University at Northridge, asking if he would be interested in reviving The Wallace Stevens Newsletter now that the Stevens material was located nearby. This led to the founding of The Wallace Stevens Society and the beginning of The Wallace Stevens Journal.
     The first meeting of the association was held at the Huntington Library on May 8, 1976, and Deutsch was selected as chairman of an executive council charged with formulating the rules and regulations of the society. The formal articles and bylaws of the society, initially called The Society for the Study of the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, were adopted on January 25, 1977, most likely in Northridge, Calif. Signatories included Deutsch as president of the society and chairman of the executive council; Herbert Turman as secretary-treasurer; and Charles Kaplan, Mary Klinger, George Drury Smith, Ann Stanford, William Walsh, and Warren Wedin as executive council members. Most of these individuals were colleagues of Deutsch’s at California State University at Northridge, the original home of the society and journal.
     The express purpose of the Wallace Stevens Society is to disseminate, for educational purposes and without profit, knowledge of the poetry and life of Wallace Stevens. The main vehicle for doing so is The Wallace Stevens Journal. Other means include sponsoring programs at annual conferences, cooperating with other literary societies, and keeping members informed about impending events. From the very beginning, the society was recognized as an educational organization by the Federal government and granted tax-exempt status. In 1984, soon after the administrative and editorial offices moved to Potsdam, N.Y., the society was incorporated in the State of New York as a not-for-profit, literary organization.
     The first issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal appeared in the spring of 1977, soon after the official formation of the society. Deutsch served as editor and Ford as associate editor. They were assisted by a panel of consultants that included A. Walton Litz, Roy Harvey Pearce, and Joseph N. Riddel. Originally, the journal was scheduled to appear quarterly; however, the first volume saw only three numbers: Vol. 1.1 (Spring), Vol. 1.2 (Summer), and Vol. 1.3/4 (Fall/Winter). Thereafter, the journal became biannual, at first with the spring issue combining numbers 1 & 2 and the fall issue numbers 3 & 4, but then in 1984, after the society’s move to Potsdam, N.Y., the spring issue simply became number 1 and the fall issue number 2.
     Deutsch served as chairman of the executive council, president of the society, and editor of the journal from 1977 until his death in December 1983. During these years, membership in the society hovered around 200, evenly divided between individuals and institutions, and issues of the journal averaged forty-eight pages. In 1984, John N. Serio of Clarkson University, an associate editor since Ford’s departure in 1979, was selected to replace Deutsch as president of the organization and editor of the journal. Under Serio’s leadership, the society was reorganized: the executive council was replaced by an advisory board, and the panel of consultants was replaced by an active editorial board that reviewed articles submitted for publication in the journal. Over the years, distinguished Stevens scholars have served on the editorial board, including Litz, Pearce, and Riddel, mentioned above, as well as Milton J. Bates, Jacqueline V. Brogan, Robert Buttel, Eleanor Cook, Frank Doggett, Alan Filreis, B. J. Leggett, George S. Lensing, James Longenbach, Glen MacLeod, Marjorie Perloff, Joan Richardson, Melita Schaum, and Lisa Steinman. In addition, Serio appointed an art editor to contribute or select cover images, a poetry editor to review poems relating to Stevens for publication, and a book review editor.
     In 1983, Clarkson University initiated a program of giving every incoming first-year student a personal computer, the first college in the country to do so, and Serio used this new technology to manage the society and to produce the journal. Armed with the database management capabilities that this new technology offered, Serio launched an aggressive membership campaign. Within a few years, membership in the society more than doubled, and currently it stands at nearly 600 members with worldwide representation. This increased interest in the Wallace Stevens Society, sparked in part by the growing recognition of Stevens as a major American poet, also led to the enhanced reputation of The Wallace Stevens Journal. Beginning with the fall 1983 issue, which he guest edited, Serio used the personal computer to typeset the journal. Given the software at the time, this was no mean accomplishment, but it led to full control over the production of the journal by the editor and resulted in greater accuracy and reduced costs. In 1989, Serio described the process whereby he used the personal computer to produce the journal and he received, quite to his surprise, the Outstanding Journal Article Award by the Society for Technical Communication.
     Material and essays in the journal range from previously unpublished primary sources, such as letters or manuscripts, to important historical documents, biographical essays, critical and theoretical articles, influence and comparative studies, and primary and secondary bibliographies. Prominent scholars, including Charles Altieri, Milton J. Bates, Michel Benamou, Jacqueline V. Brogan, Eleanor Cook, Margaret Dickie, Albert Gelpi, A. Walton Litz, Samuel French Morse, Alicia Ostriker, Roy Harvey Pearce, Joseph N. Riddel, and Helen Vendler, have published in its pages. Acclaimed poets, such as Marvin Bell, Robert Creeley, Jorie Graham, X. J. Kennedy, William Meredith, Robert Mezey, Robert Pinsky, William Jay Smith, William Stafford, and John Updike, have contributed poems. Hailed by A. Walton Litz as “the best of the single-author journals,” The Wallace Stevens Journal has become the major periodical outlet for new Stevens scholarship, and issues now average well over 100 pages. One does not have to be a member of the society to publish in it.
     Another way in which the society fulfills its mission of sharing new knowledge about the poetry of Wallace Stevens is by sponsoring programs at national and regional conferences, such as the Modern Language Association convention, meetings of its regional affiliates, and the American Literature Association convention. In particular, annual programs at the MLA have showcased the work of the society. As early as December 1977, the society sponsored a two-part program on thematic elements in the shorter poems that attracted an enormous audience with its list of top Stevens scholars including Benamou, Buttel, Doggett, Litz, Morse, and Vendler. In December 1978, in anticipation of the approaching Stevens centennial in 1979, the society arranged an MLA program of contemporary poets honoring Stevens that included Michael Benedikt, Alfred Corn, Robert Fitzgerald, Barbara Guest, Richard Howard, William Meredith, Muriel Rukeyser, and William Jay Smith. Holly Stevens, the poet’s daughter and editor of his letters, as well as Peter Brazeau, a scholar working at the time on an oral biography of Stevens, also participated.
     These convention programs have played an important role in Stevens studies, for they have initiated new directions in Stevens criticism. Frequently, programs have become launching pads for special issues of The Wallace Stevens Journal. For example, many of the participants in the centennial program as well as John Ciardi, Robert Creeley, Karl Shapiro, Robert Fitzgerald, W. S. Merwin, Richard Wilbur, Richard Ellmann, and Robert Penn Warren contributed to the 1979 Commemorative Issue. Other program topics have led to the following special issues: Stevens and Postmodern Criticism (Fall 1984), Stevens and Women (Fall 1988), Stevens and Politics (Fall 1989), Stevens and the Structures of Sound (Fall 1991), Poets Reading Stevens (Spring 1993), Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop (Fall 1995), and Approaching the Millennium: Stevens and Apocalyptic Language (Fall 1999). In one instance, a program at MLA on teaching Wallace Stevens culminated in a book of that title, edited by Serio and Leggett (University of Tennessee Press, 1994), containing twenty-four original essays on effective classroom strategies.
     Deutsch established the format of The Wallace Stevens Journal that has endured for nearly twenty-five years. Each issue features a distinctive cover, usually an original artwork exemplifying a passage in a Stevens poem, often by well-established artists such as Kathryn Jacobi, Jerry Uelsmann, and Carl Chiarenza. Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame contributed a cartoon about Stevens to the spring 1991 issue. Following the main section of scholarly articles are shorter sections of poems, reviews, and news and comments in the fall issue or a current bibliography in the spring issue. In 1990 the journal was honored by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals when Serio received the Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement. Future projects of the society include a special issue on International Perspectives on Wallace Stevens, to be guest edited by Bart Eeckhout of Ghent University, Belgium, and a CD-ROM of the first twenty-five years of The Wallace Stevens Journal, edited by Serio.
     In 1991, the Wallace Stevens Society initiated a poetry series by publishing and distributing free to members of the society the work of contemporary poets, especially those who have had difficulty in finding a publisher for their second book. To date, the Wallace Stevens Society Press has published Eve’s Primer by Dorothy Emerson (1991); A Morning Pose, by Robert Noreault, with drawings by Hugh M. Neil (1994); and Inhabited World: New & Selected Poems 1970–1995 by John Allman (1995).
     Membership in the Wallace Stevens Society, which includes a subscription to The Wallace Stevens Journal, is open to all. Information on joining can be found at the society’s Web site www.wallacestevens.com or by contacting Serio, who continues to serve as president of the society and editor of the journal.

Clarkson University

† A version of this essay appeared in Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1999
Ed. Matthew Bruccoli. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. 369-71.