Writers Associated with Key West, Florida: #2 Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) was an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut as well as a poet. He first visited Key West in 1922 and liked it so much that he returned to it virtually every winter until 1940, but he never took his wife Elsie or his daughter Holly (born 1924). He stayed at the Casa Marina, and was noted in Key West for his drunken behavior: he once quarrelled with Robert Frost, and broke his hand hitting Hemingway on the jaw, although Hemingway thumped him back into the gutter. Two of his poems were 'The Idea of Order at Key West' and 'Farewell to Florida'.