“The villages slept as the capable man went down,Time swished on the village clocks and dreams were alive,The enormous gongs gave edges to their sounds,As the rider, no chevalere and poorly dressed,Impatient of the bells and midnight forms,Rode over the picket docks, rode down the road,And, capable, created in his mind,Eventual victor, out of the martyr's bones,The ultimate elegance: the imagined land.”

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.