Harriet Monroe, in her review of Harmonium for Poetry (the journal she founded), proclaims that readers breathe "delight . . . like a perfume" in response to the "natural effluence of [Stevens's] own clear and untroubled and humorously philosophical delight in the beauty of things as they are." All critics, however, were not as impressed by this volume. Joseph Miller, in his article on Stevens for Dictionary of Literary Biography, notes that the few critics who paid attention to the collection dismissed it "as a product of mere dilettantism."

After the publication of succeeding volumes of poetry, Stevens established a reputation as one of America's finest poets that has been maintained to this day. The growing regard for his poetry was due in large part to major critical works written by Helen Vendler and Harold Bloom. Bloom wrote in Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate that the poet...