ABSTRACT
When Stevens began to plan in later life with his wealthy friend Henry Church to found a chair of poetry at a great university he must have felt that he had already written notes for a theory of poetry to be taught from that same chair. In "Jumbo" Stevens invoked a "companion in nothingness" this way: "musician", "transformer", "prince of the secondary men", "ancestor of Narcissus", "bad bespoken lacker", and "this imager". Conceding the modest source of aspiration in the headache, if a canon is a priestly functionary, the similar role is that taken by the rabbi described by Stevens; "the figure of a man devoted in the extreme to scholarship and at the same time to making some use of it for human purposes". Though Stevens resisted being called a humanist, it is perfectly consistent with actual humanism to resist the label. His poetry's humanism is certainly not a regard for mankind in high moral or sentimental view.
