critics' poet

As Henry James has required already, so Stevens will require the work of many an esthetic theorist and analyst to educate his public of the future. Supplementing the old dichotomy of the “readers’ poet” and the “poets’ poet,” it is possible to coin for Stevens a third category, that of the “critics’ poet.” The universities will have their joy explaining him long after the more popular poets are deservedly forgotten.

—Peter Viereck, “Some Notes On Wallace Stevens,” The Trinity Review (Vol. VIII, No. 3, May 1954)