“The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.”

American modernist poet

Wallace Stevens was an American modernist poet. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, he lived from 1879 to 1955. He is known for writing poems that shaped American modernism while also working much of his life in the insurance business. He studied at Harvard and later at New York Law School before settling into a long career as an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut. His poetry is often noted for its careful language, philosophical reach, and attention to imagination, perception, and the relationship between reality and the mind.