Widely regarded as one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century, “Sunday Morning” meditates on the relation between religious belief and the pleasures of nature. Wallace Stevens was an American who spent most of his life, when not writing poetry, as an insurance lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut. This poem appeared in a shorter version, with its stanzas edited and rearranged by Harriet Monroe, in
Poetryfor November 1915, and in the form we now read in
Harmonium, Stevens’ first book of poems, in 1923. It begins by imagining a woman staying home in her peignoir on a Sunday morning, enjoying her “coffee and oranges in a sunny chair”, and yet irresistibly thinking, or day-dreaming, about the Christian religion being celebrated in church. The poem represents an imagined dialogue…
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Citation: Forsyth, Neil. "Sunday Morning". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 May 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33188, accessed 24 November 2024.]
