In September 2019 I returned to the Huntington Library, in San Marino, CA, to participate in a conference on the correspondence of Wallace Stevens. I had begun to work in the Stevens archive in 1982. My visits — several extended — to this magnificent archive (with its library, its botanical gardens, its art collection) spanned the ’80s and into the ’90s. By 2019 it had been 37 years since my first encounter with this (and, really, with any at that point) archive. I gave a talk at the conference that was, in part, personal. In its Fall 2020 issue The Wallace Stevens Journal printed some of conference talks, including my own. HERE is a link to the text of the talk.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. He is currently writing a book on the art & avant-garde of 1960. He has taught a massive open online course, "
Founder/Faculty Director, 