A Cure of the Mind The Poetics of Wallace Stevens heodore Sampson Drawing its essential insights from the perspectivist thought of Emerson, Nietzche, William James and Paul Valery, the book examines Wallace Stevens' (1859-1955) deeply fragmented sense of self and world as projected in "Harmonium, and then proceeds to investigate the poet's stance as an Emersonian pragmatist or "connoisseur of chaos, " who must constantly throw away the lights' and write his poems "in the dark.