We’re used to thinking of this process as it relates to Hurricane Season, but there are storms in the Spirit too. Wallace Stevens is a poet deeply conscious of the impact the startling discoveries of 19th and 20th Century science have had on confidence in the supernatural. Although he chose a return to traditional Christianity at the end of his life, for poetic purpose,

worked from a “worst case scenario” to discover what resources we had in a universe without God. Nature and human resilience are the bases for seeing what might prove enough. We’ll do close reading of two poems—his signature “Sunday Morning” and “Credences of Summer” with a brief sidetrack to the long and difficult “Esthetique du Mal.”