
— Wallace Stevens American poet 1879 - 1955
The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value
Kontext: What the poet has in mind... is that poetic value is an intrinsic value. It is not the value of knowledge. It is not the value of faith. It is the value of imagination. The poet tries to exemplify it, in part as I have tried to exemplify it here, by identifying it with an imaginative activity that diffuses itself throughout our lives.