“After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.”—So writes Wallace Stevens, a giant of American modernist poetry, in one of his aphoristic “adagia.”

In this lecture we will attempt to understand what he meant, or might have meant, in this odd and perhaps disturbing formulation. What is the role of poetry in our contemporary world, at turns banal and catastrophe-ridden?

We will seek our answer through consideration of some of Stevens' other prose writings and, of course, his poetry--and maybe, if successful, find a little redemption.