Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet and essayist, noted for exploring through his works the conflict between reality and what man makes of it in his mind. Trained in law, he spent the major part of his life working for an insurance firm, eventually reaching the post of its Vice President. However, writing poems was a passion for him, believing that "one writes poetry because one must". Beginning his literary career with reporting for school newspaper, he started writing regularly while studying at Harvard University. However, it took him several more years before he could start contributing regularly to different journals, publishing his first collection of poems at the age of forty-four. However, its failure to garner much attention and the birth of his only child compelled him to put his literary ambition in hiatus for a decade. Eventually, he started writing once again, producing several long poems and publishing books in quick succession, leaving an unfulfilled ambition to rewrite Dante's Divine Comedy at his death.
