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75-466: The Cornwall Bridge is located in southwestern Cornwall and southeastern Sharon , near the village known as Cornwall Bridge . It is oriented east-west, principally crossing the south-flowing Housatonic River, but also the tracks of the Housatonic Railroad which parallels the river's east bank, and roads named River Road on each side. The bridge has six spans of open-spandrel concrete construction,

150-660: A Blackbird ". His second period commenced with Ideas of Order (1933), included in Transport to Summer (1947). His third and final period began with the publication of The Auroras of Autumn (1950), followed by The Necessary Angel: Essays On Reality and the Imagination (1951). Many of Stevens's poems, like " Anecdote of the Jar ", " The Man with the Blue Guitar ", " The Idea of Order at Key West ", " Of Modern Poetry ", and "Notes Towards

225-411: A G.I. series that revealed diverticulitis , a gallstone , and a severely bloated stomach. Stevens was admitted to St. Francis Hospital and on April 26 was operated on by Dr. Benedict Landry. It was determined that Stevens was suffering from stomach cancer in the lower region by the large intestines and blocking the normal digestion of food. Lower tract oncology of a malignant nature was almost always

300-524: A Stevens biographer specializing in attention to Stevens as a businessman lawyer, Stevens in part related his poetry to his imaginative capacities as a poet while assigning his lawyer's duties more to the reality of making ends meet in his personal life. Grey finds the poem "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts" useful to understanding the approach Stevens took in separating his poetry and his profession, writing: "The law and its prose were separate from poetry, and supplied

375-606: A Supreme Fiction", deal with the art of making art and poetry in particular. His Collected Poems (1954) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955. Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania , in 1879 into a Lutheran family of Dutch and German descent. John Zeller, his maternal great-grandfather, settled in the Susquehanna Valley in 1709 as a religious refugee. The son of a prosperous lawyer, Stevens attended Harvard as

450-503: A bridge of some sort has stood here for many years. The present bridge was built in 1930, and the 19th-century covered bridge was demoted to carrying only pedestrians. The covered bridge then washed away when the Housatonic flooded in 1936. After the state replaced the bridge, the industrial and commercial center of the Village of Cornwall Bridge slowly moved up the hill away from the river, to

525-463: A collection of over 28,000 items. It sponsors art shows, lectures, a Books & Bloom sale and tour, along with many other events. The Cornwall Chronicle is a non-profit monthly newspaper that publishes news and feature stories about Cornwall, a calendar of events, and drawings by local artists. It was started in 1991 and has not missed an issue since. The Rose Algrant Show is an exhibit of works in all media by artists from Cornwall, Connecticut over

600-421: A constant theme throughout Stevens's poetry: "A great many of Stevens's poems show an object or group of objects in aimless oscillation or circling movement." In the end, reality remains. The supreme fiction is that conceptualization of reality that seems to resonate in its rightness, so much so that it seems to have captured, if only for a moment, something actual and real. I am the angel of reality, seen for

675-436: A form of relief for Stevens by way of contrast with poetry, as the milkman (portrayed as the realist in the poem) relieves from the moonlight, as the walk around the block relieves the writer's trance like absorption. But the priority was clear: imagination, poetry, and secrecy, pursued after hours were primary, good in themselves; reason, prose, and clarity, indulged in during working hours, were secondary and instrumental". In

750-454: A late flowering of artistic genius. His contemporary Harriet Monroe called Stevens "a poet, rich and numerous and profound, provocative of joy, creative beauty in those who can respond to him". Vendler notes that there are three distinguishable moods present in Stevens's long poems: ecstasy, apathy, and reluctance between ecstasy and apathy. She also notes that his poetry was highly influenced by

825-513: A major portion of Mohawk State Forest . As of the census of 2000, there were 1,434 people, 615 households, and 389 families residing in the town. The population density was 31.2 inhabitants per square mile (12.0/km ). There were 873 housing units at an average density of 19.0 per square mile (7.3/km ). The racial makeup of the town was 97.49% White , 0.21% African American , 0.70% Asian , 0.21% from other races , and 1.39% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.46% of

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900-471: A moment standing in the door. Yet I am the necessary angel of earth, Since, in my sight, you see the earth again, Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set, And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings, Like watery words awash; A figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man Of the mind, an apparition appareled in Apparels of such lightest look that

975-435: A mortal diagnosis in the 1950s. This was withheld from Stevens, but his daughter Holly was fully informed and advised not to tell her father. Stevens was released in a temporarily improved ambulatory condition on May 11 and returned to his home to recuperate. His wife insisted on trying to attend to him as he recovered but she had suffered a stroke in the previous winter and was not able to assist as she had hoped. Stevens entered

1050-709: A non-degree three-year special student from 1897 to 1900, where he served as the 1901 president of The Harvard Advocate . According to his biographer Milton Bates, Stevens was personally introduced to the philosopher George Santayana while living in Boston and was strongly influenced by Santayana's book Interpretations of Poetry and Religion . Holly Stevens, his daughter, recalled her father's long dedication to Santayana when she posthumously reprinted her father's collected letters in 1977 for Knopf. In one of his early journals, Stevens gave an account of spending an evening with Santayana in early 1900 and sympathizing with Santayana about

1125-399: A peristyle, And from the peristyle project a masque Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness, Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, Is equally converted into palms, Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm, Madame, we are where we began. The saxophones squiggle because, as J. Hillis Miller says of Stevens in his book Poets of Reality , the theme of universal fluctuation is

1200-402: A poor review published at that time of Interpretations . After his Harvard years, Stevens moved to New York City and briefly worked as a journalist. He then attended New York Law School , graduating with a law degree in 1903, following the example of his two other brothers with law degrees. On a trip back to Reading in 1904, Stevens met Elsie Viola Kachel (1886–1963, also known as Elsie Moll),

1275-468: A sequence titled "Phases" in the November 1914 edition of Poetry ) was written at age 35, although as an undergraduate at Harvard, Stevens had written poetry and exchanged sonnets with Santayana. Many of his canonical works were written well after he turned 50. According to Bloom, who called Stevens the "best and most representative" American poet of the time, no Western writer since Sophocles has had such

1350-465: A speculative interpretation of Stevens under this approach. In his 2016 book Things Merely Are: Philosophy in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens , Simon Critchley indicates a refinement of the appreciation of the interaction of reality and poetry in Stevens's poems, writing: "Steven's late poems stubbornly show how the mind cannot seize hold of the ultimate nature of reality that faces it. Reality retreats before

1425-448: A time (during The Great Depression ) when many Americans were out of work, searching through trash cans for food." Harriet Monroe , reviewing Harmonium for Poetry , wrote: "The delight which one breathes like a perfume from the poetry of Wallace Stevens is the natural effluence of his own clear and untroubled and humorously philosophical delight in the beauty of things as they are." By 1934, Stevens had been named vice president of

1500-495: A turn Of my shoulder and quickly, too quickly, I am gone? In one of his last poems, "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour", Stevens describes the experience of an idea that satisfies the imagination and writes, "The world imagined is the ultimate good." Stevens places this thought in the individual human mind and writes of its compatibility with his own poetic interpretation of God, writing: "Within its vital boundary, in

1575-400: A way that the old religious idea of God can never again be. But with the right idea, we may again find the same sort of solace that we once found in old religious ideas. "[Stevens] finds, too, a definite value in the complete contact with reality. Only, in fact, by this stark knowledge can he attain his own spiritual self that can resist the disintegrating forces of life ... Powerful force though

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1650-408: A young woman who had worked as a saleswoman, milliner , and stenographer . After a long courtship, he married her in 1909 over the objections of his parents, who considered her poorly educated and lower-class. As The New York Times reported in 2009, "Nobody from his family attended the wedding, and Stevens never again visited or spoke to his parents during his father's lifetime." A daughter, Holly,

1725-742: Is a kind of total grandeur at the end, With every visible thing enlarged and yet No more than a bed, a chair and moving nuns, The immensest theatre, the pillowed porch, The book and candle in your ambered room. According to Mariani, Stevens had a large, corpulent figure throughout most of his life, standing 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall and weighing as much as 240 pounds (110 kg). Some of his doctors put him on medical diets. On March 28, 1955, Stevens went to see Dr. James Moher for accumulating detriments to his health. Moher's examination did not reveal anything, and he ordered Stevens to undergo an x-ray and barium enema on April 1, neither of which showed anything. On April 19 Stevens underwent

1800-486: Is led by Hines, Macksey, Simon Critchley , Glauco Cambon, and Paul Bove . These four schools offer occasional agreement and disagreement of perspective; for example, Critchley reads Bloom's interpretation of Stevens as in the anti-realist school while seeing Stevens as not in the anti-realist school of poetic interpretation. Stevens is a rare example of a poet whose main output came largely only as he approached 40 years of age. His first major publication (four poems from

1875-450: Is not possible. Stevens suggests that we live in the tension between the shapes we take as the world acts upon us and the ideas of order that our imagination imposes upon the world. The world influences us in our most normal activities: "The dress of a woman of Lhassa, / In its place, / Is an invisible element of that place / Made visible." As Stevens says in his essay "Imagination as Value", "The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of

1950-497: Is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have." Throughout his poetic career, Stevens was concerned with the question of what to think about the world now that notions of religion no longer suffice. His solution might be summarized by the notion of a "Supreme Fiction", an idea that would serve to correct and improve old notions of religion along with old notions of

2025-501: Is that you write about subjects. Frost: The trouble with you, Wallace, is that you write about bric-a-brac. By late February 1947, with Stevens approaching 67 years of age, it became apparent that he had completed the most productive ten years of his life in writing poetry. February 1947 saw the publication of his volume of poems Transport to Summer , which was positively received by F. O. Mathiessen in The New York Times . In

2100-479: The Southern Review , Hi Simons wrote that much of early Stevens is juvenile romantic subjectivist, before he became a realist and naturalist in his more mature and more widely recognized idiom of later years. Stevens, whose work became meditative and philosophical, became very much a poet of ideas. "The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully", he wrote. Of the relation between consciousness and

2175-644: The 2020 census . The town is part of the Northwest Hills Planning Region . The town of Cornwall, Connecticut, is named after the county of Cornwall, England . The town was incorporated in 1740, nearly four decades before the United States declared its independence. The town encompasses three distinct townships: Cornwall Bridge and West Cornwall, each bordered by the Housatonic River to the west, and Cornwall Village, located three miles east of

2250-546: The 11 years immediately preceding its publication, Stevens had written three volumes of poems: Ideas of Order , The Man with the Blue Guitar , Parts of a World , and Transport to Summer . These were all written before Stevens took up the writing of his well-received The Auroras of Autumn . In 1950–51, when Stevens received news that Santayana had retired to live at a retirement institution in Rome for his final years, Stevens composed his poem "To an Old Philosopher in Rome": It

2325-524: The Avery Convalescent Hospital on May 20. By early June he was still sufficiently stable to attend a ceremony at the University of Hartford to receive an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree. On June 13 he traveled to New Haven to collect an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University. On June 20 he returned to his home and insisted on working for limited hours. On July 21 Stevens

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2400-620: The Casa Marina hotel on the Atlantic Ocean. He first visited in January 1922, while on a business trip. "The place is a paradise," he wrote to Elsie, "midsummer weather, the sky brilliantly clear and intensely blue, the sea blue and green beyond what you have ever seen." Key West's influence on Stevens's poetry is evident in many of the poems published in his first two collections, Harmonium and Ideas of Order. In February 1935, Stevens encountered

2475-578: The age of 18. It has been held annually since 1959 (2020 was online). The town was home to the Foreign Mission School between 1817 and 1826. The town is served by Connecticut Route 4 , U.S. Route 7 , and Connecticut Routes 43 , 125 and 128 . Route 4 leads east 13 miles (21 km) to Torrington and west 11 miles (18 km) to Sharon , while Route 7 leads north 14 miles (23 km) to North Canaan and south 25 miles (40 km) to New Milford . Routes 43, 125 and 128 are entirely within

2550-405: The average family size was 2.93. In the town, the population was spread out, with 24.4% under the age of 18, 3.3% from 18 to 24, 25.7% from 25 to 44, 28.9% from 45 to 64, and 17.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.5 males. The median income for a household in the town

2625-633: The bespectacled Hemingway, who seemed to weave like a shark, and Papa hitting him one-two and Stevens going down "spectacularly," as Hemingway would remember it, into a puddle of fresh rainwater. In 1940, Stevens made his final trip to Key West. Frost was at the Casa Marina again, and again the two men argued. According to Mariani, the exchange in Key West in February 1940 included the following comments: Stevens: Your poems are too academic. Frost: Your poems are too executive. Stevens: The trouble with you Robert,

2700-401: The central mind We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough. Stevens concludes that God and human imagination are closely identified, but that feeling of rightness which for so long a time existed with that old religious idea of God may be accessed again. This supreme fiction will be something equally central to our being, but contemporary to our lives, in

2775-444: The company. After he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard but declined since it would have required him to give up his job at The Hartford. Throughout his life, Stevens was politically conservative. The critic William York Tindall described him as a Republican in the mold of Robert A. Taft . Stevens made numerous visits to Key West , Florida, between 1922 and 1940, usually staying at

2850-461: The current intersection of US Route 7 and Connecticut Route 4 . The Cornwall Bridge Railroad Station remains below the new bridge, although it has not received service since 1972. [REDACTED] Media related to Cornwall Bridge at Wikimedia Commons Cornwall, Connecticut Cornwall is a town in Litchfield County , Connecticut , United States. The population was 1,567 at

2925-791: The early reception of his poems was oriented to symbolic reading of them, often using simple substitution of metaphors and imagery for their asserted equivalents in meaning. For Vendler, this method of reception and interpretation was often limited in its usefulness and would eventually be replaced by more effective forms of literary evaluation and review. After Stevens's death in 1955, the literary interpretation of his poetry and critical essays began to flourish with full-length books written about his poems by such prominent literary scholars as Vendler and Harold Bloom . Vendler's two books on Stevens's poetry distinguished his short poems and his long poems and suggested that they be considered under separate forms of literary interpretation and critique. Her studies of

3000-518: The end of his life, Stevens had left uncompleted his larger ambition to rewrite Dante's Divine Comedy for those who "live in the world of Darwin and not the world of Plato ." The initial reception of Stevens's poetry followed the publication of his first collection of poems, Harmonium , in the early 1920s. Comments on the poems were made by fellow poets and a small number of critics including William Carlos Williams and Hi Simons. In her book on Stevens's poetry, Helen Vendler writes that much of

3075-531: The evaluation of surety insurance claims as follows: "If Stevens rejected a claim and the company was sued, he would hire a local lawyer to defend the case in the place where it would be tried. Stevens would instruct the outside lawyer through a letter reviewing the facts of the case and setting out the company's substantive legal position; he would then step out of the case, delegating all decisions on procedure and litigation strategy." In 1917 Stevens and his wife moved to 210 Farmington Avenue, where they remained for

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3150-669: The evolution of business and industry. During the 19th century and the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, the town maintained two furnaces, including a blast furnace, to support charcoal-making industries. Cornwall was home to the Foreign Mission School , dating to 1817, as well as the Cream Hill Agricultural School in 1845, whose property, still an active farmstead, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Cornwall has long been known as

3225-453: The fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds. In Opus Posthumous , Stevens writes, "After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." But as the poet attempts to find a fiction to replace the lost gods, he immediately encounters a problem: a direct knowledge of reality

3300-458: The home office of Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company and moved to Hartford , where he remained for the rest of his life. Stevens's career as a businessman-lawyer by day and a poet during his leisure time has received significant attention, as summarized in Thomas Grey's The Wallace Stevens Case . Grey has summarized parts of the responsibilities of Stevens's day-to-day life that involved

3375-520: The idea of God of which Stevens was critical. In this example from the satirical " A High-Toned Old Christian Woman ", Stevens plays with the notions of immediately accessible, but ultimately unsatisfying, notions of reality: Poetry is the supreme Fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms Like windy citherns, hankering for hymns. We agree in principle. That's clear. But take The opposing law and make

3450-560: The imagination before the reason has established them." Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction is a lyrical poetic work of three parts, containing 10 poems each, with a preface and epilogue opening and closing the entire work of three parts. It was first published in 1942 and represents a comprehensive attempt by Stevens to state his view of the art of writing poetry. Stevens studied the art of poetic expression in many of his writings and poems, including The Necessary Angel , where he wrote, "The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what

3525-416: The imagination that shapes and orders it. Poetry is therefore the experience of failure. As Stevens puts it in a famous late poem, the poet gives us ideas about the thing, not the thing itself." The reception and interpretation of Stevens's poetry have been widespread and of diverse orientation. In their book The Fluent Mundo Leonard and Wharton define at least four schools of interpretation, beginning with

3600-518: The late 20th century is Daniel Fuchs's The Comic Spirit of Wallace Stevens . Interest in the reading and reception of Stevens's poetry continues into the early 21st century, with a full volume dedicated in the Library of America to his collected writings and poetry. In his book on the reading of Stevens as a poet of what he calls "philosophical poetry", Charles Altieri presents his own reading of such philosophers as Hegel and Wittgenstein while presenting

3675-712: The longer poems are in her book On Extended Wings and lists Stevens's longer poems as including " The Comedian as the Letter C ", " Sunday Morning ", "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle", "Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery", "Owl's Clover", " The Man with the Blue Guitar ", "Examination of the Hero in a Time of War", "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction", "Esthetique du Mal", "Description without Place", "Credences of Summer", "The Auroras of Autumn", and his last and longest poem, "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven". Another full-length study of Stevens's poetry in

3750-412: The longest at 180 feet (55 m) spanning the river. The five smaller spans (two on the west bank, three on the east) are each 76 feet (23 m) in length. In addition to the arched portion of the structure, there are three concrete girder approach spans on each side, giving the bridge a total length of 859 feet (262 m). It carries two lanes of traffic, with no sidewalks. The open spandrel design

3825-416: The marriage suffered as a result, but the couple remained married. In his biography of Stevens, Paul Mariani relates that the couple was largely estranged, separated by nearly a full decade in age, though living in the same home by the mid-1930s. Mariani writes: "there were signs of domestic fracture to consider. From the beginning, Stevens, who had not shared a bedroom with his wife for years now, moved into

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3900-586: The master bedroom with its attached study on the second floor." After working in several New York law firms between 1904 and 1907, Stevens was hired in January 1908 as a lawyer for the American Bonding Company. By 1914 he had become vice president of the New York office of the Equitable Surety Company of St. Louis, Missouri . When this job was made redundant after a merger in 1916, he joined

3975-433: The mind,/ We say God and the imagination are one .../ How high that highest candle lights the dark." Imaginative knowledge of the type described in "Final Soliloquy" necessarily exists within the mind, since it is an aspect of the imagination that can never attain a direct experience of reality. We say God and the imagination are one ... How high that highest candle lights the dark. Out of this same light, out of

4050-434: The next seven years and where he completed his first book of poems, Harmonium . From 1924 to 1932 he resided at 735 Farmington Avenue. In 1932 he purchased a 1920s Colonial at 118 Westerly Terrace, where he resided for the remainder of his life. According to Mariani, Stevens was financially independent as an insurance executive by the mid-1930s, earning "$ 20,000 a year, equivalent to about $ 350,000 today [2016]. And this at

4125-542: The paintings of Paul Klee and Paul Cézanne : Stevens saw in the paintings of both Paul Klee—who was his favorite painter—and Cézanne the kind of work he wanted to do himself as a Modernist poet. Klee had imagined symbols. Klee is not a directly realistic painter and is full of whimsical and fanciful and imaginative and humorous projections of reality in his paintings. The paintings are often enigmatic or full of riddles, and Stevens liked that as well. What Stevens liked in Cézanne

4200-546: The poet Robert Frost at the Casa Marina. The two men argued, and Frost reported that Stevens had been drunk and acted inappropriately. According to Mariani, Stevens often visited speakeasies during Prohibition with both lawyer friends and poetry acquaintances. The following year, Stevens was in an altercation with Ernest Hemingway at a party at the Waddell Avenue home of a mutual acquaintance in Key West. Stevens broke his hand, apparently from hitting Hemingway's jaw, and

4275-407: The population. There were 615 households, out of which 29.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.5% were married couples living together, 8.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.6% were non-families. 30.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.33 and

4350-713: The prime advocates of Stevens found in the critics Harvey Pearce and Helen Regeuiro, who supported the thesis "that Stevens's later poetry denies the value of imagination for the sake of an unobstructed view of the 'things themselves'". The next school of interpretation Leonard and Wharton identify is the Romantic school, led by Vendler, Bloom, James Baird, and Joseph Riddel. A third school of Stevens interpretation that sees Stevens as heavily dependent on 20th-century Continental philosophy includes J. Hillis Miller , Thomas J. Hines, and Richard Macksey . A fourth school sees Stevens as fully Husserlian or Heideggerian in approach and tone and

4425-576: The river. One significant natural feature is the vast amount of forested land, including hundreds of acres of Mohawk State Forest , resulting in Cornwall often being called “the “Greenest Town in Connecticut”. The proximity of its settlements to the Housatonic River offered an efficient means of transporting materials and goods, which helped stimulate Cornwall's early farming economy as well as assisting in

4500-652: The seductive beauties of the countryside were portrayed: Cornwall also makes a glancing appearance in Wallace Stevens 's late poem "Reality is an Activity of the Most August Imagination." Cornwall played a role in the establishment of Christianity in the Hawaiian Islands after a native Hawaiian died here of Typhus in 1818. This tragedy was instrumental in the Congregational church's 1820 outreach to

4575-633: The town of Cornwall, Route 43 running from North Corners near Cornwall village to Cornwall Hollow, Route 128 running from North Corners to West Cornwall, and Route 125 running from Cornwall Village north to Route 128. The covered bridge in West Cornwall, crossing the Housatonic River, is one of only three covered bridges in Litchfield County. It has a span of 242 feet (74 m) and has been in continuous service since 1864. Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955)

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4650-496: The town which contains a library and tennis courts. Cornwall is a member of Regional School District 01, which also includes the towns of Canaan, Kent, North Canaan , Salisbury , and Sharon. Public school students attend the Cornwall Consolidated School for grades K–8 and Housatonic Valley Regional High School for grades 9–12. The Cornwall Library, organized in 1869, constructed a new building in 2002 that houses

4725-405: The world in an attempt to make it seem coherent. To make sense of the world is to construct a worldview through an active exercise of the imagination. This is no dry, philosophical activity, but a passionate engagement in finding order and meaning. Thus Stevens wrote in " The Idea of Order at Key West ": Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of the sea, Words of

4800-449: The world, in Stevens's work "imagination" is not equivalent to consciousness, nor is "reality" equivalent to the world as it exists outside our minds. Reality is the product of the imagination as it shapes the world. Because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world; reality is an activity, not a static object. We approach reality with a piecemeal understanding, putting together parts of

4875-610: The ‘ Sandwich Islands ’ at Kona, Hawaii . Cornwall is in northwestern Litchfield County. It is bordered to the north by the town of Canaan , to the east by Goshen , to the south by Warren , to the southwest by Kent , and to the west, across the Housatonic River , by Sharon . According to the United States Census Bureau , the town of Cornwall has a total area of 46.3 square miles (120.0 km ), of which 46.1 square miles (119.3 km ) are land and 0.3 square miles (0.7 km ), or 0.55%, are water. The town contains

4950-672: The “Home of the Covered Bridge,” which has spanned the Housatonic River since 1864. One of only three surviving covered bridges in Connecticut, the bridge is a popular tourist destination and among the most-photographed locations in the state. Modern-day Cornwall continues to reflect its rural farming character while being home to arts, culture, artisans and entrepreneurs. Its convenience to major metropolitan areas makes it attractive for year-round and second-home residents. In 1939 poet Mark Van Doren wrote "The Hills of Little Cornwall", in which

5025-499: Was $ 54,886, and the median income for a family was $ 64,750. Males had a median income of $ 46,875 versus $ 30,536 for females. The per capita income for the town was $ 42,484. About 1.0% of families and 3.0% of the population were below the poverty line , including 3.0% of those under age 18 and 1.6% of those age 65 or over. Some of the main features of Cornwall include the Cream Hill Lake, the Covered Bridge, Mohawk Ski Mountain and

5100-561: Was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania , educated at Harvard and then New York Law School , and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut . Stevens's first period begins with the publication of Harmonium (1923), followed by a slightly revised and amended second edition in 1930. It features, among other poems, " The Emperor of Ice-Cream ", " Sunday Morning ", " The Snow Man ", and " Thirteen Ways of Looking at

5175-568: Was born in 1924. She was baptized Episcopalian and later posthumously edited her father's letters and a collection of his poems. In 1913, the Stevenses rented a New York City apartment from sculptor Adolph A. Weinman , who made a bust of Elsie. Her striking profile may have been used on Weinman's 1916–1945 Mercury dime and the Walking Liberty Half Dollar . In later years, Elsie Stevens began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness and

5250-446: Was chosen to minimize the bridge's footprint and use of concrete, which would have been much more extensive and expensive with more typical designs. It is one of six open-spandrel bridges in the state, and is the largest of those. The bridge was built as part of a state program to modernize the infrastructure of the state's principal travel arteries. The village on the Cornwall side is called Cornwall Bridge, having been so named because

5325-542: Was in the habit of visiting St Patrick's Cathedral for meditative purposes. Stevens debated questions of theodicy during his final weeks with Fr. Arthur Hanley, chaplain of St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, where Stevens spent his last days suffering from stomach cancer and was eventually converted to Catholicism in April 1955 by Hanley. This purported deathbed conversion is disputed, particularly by Stevens's daughter, Holly, who

5400-558: Was not present at the time of the conversion, according to Hanley. The conversion has been confirmed by both Hanley and a nun present at the time of the conversion and communion. Stevens's obituary in the local newspaper was minimal at the family's request as to the details of his death. The obituary for Stevens that appeared in Poetry magazine was assigned to William Carlos Williams , who felt it suitable to compare Stevens's poetry to Dante 's Vita Nuova and Milton 's Paradise Lost . At

5475-466: Was readmitted to St. Francis Hospital and his condition deteriorated. On August 1, though bedridden, he revived sufficiently to speak some parting words to his daughter before falling asleep after normal visiting hours were over; he was found deceased the next morning, August 2, at 8:30. He is buried in Hartford's Cedar Hill Cemetery . Mariani indicates that friends of Stevens were aware that throughout his years and many visits to New York City, Stevens

5550-495: Was repeatedly knocked to the street by Hemingway. Stevens later apologized. Mariani relates this: directly in front of Stevens was the very nemesis of his Imagination—the antipoet poet (Hemingway), the poet of extraordinary reality, as Stevens would later call him, which put him in the same category as that other antipoet, William Carlos Williams , except that Hemingway was fifteen years younger and much faster than Williams, and far less friendly. So it began, with Stevens swinging at

5625-448: Was the reduction, you might say, of the world to a few monumental objects. Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium , was published in 1923, and republished in a second edition in 1930. Two more books of his poetry were produced during the 1920s and 1930s and three more in the 1940s. He received the annual National Book Award for Poetry twice, in 1951 for The Auroras of Autumn and in 1955 for Collected Poems . For Thomas Grey,

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