Reading Malcolm Woodland, Wallace Stevens and the Apocalyptic Mode. Reminded once again how closely Stevens listened to other poets (from Isaiah to Whitman to...), re-fashioning their terms & phrasing to meet the pressure of his own time & his own concerns & idiom (see especially comments on relation between Stevens' "Martial Cadenza" and Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"). Every case is different, every situation is particular.

This, it seems to me, is the real thing, the real work & tradition of poetry, in every era...