Aside from being one of the most critically acclaimed poets in the world at the time, Wallace Stevens held a day job as a vice president of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Insurance Company.

   One day in the 1930s, Stevens was reading an article in newspaper about how popular Ernest Hemingway was and how much money he was making. “I made forty dollars from my poetry last year,” Stevens grumbled to himself. That’s when the inspiration hit him that he should punch Hemingway in the mouth. “I’ll knock his block off!” Stevens decided.

    As it happened, Stevens was in the habit of taking his vacation by himself, apart from his wife and daughter. His favorite place to go was Key West, Florida, where he knew Hemingway lived, but he had never met him. Stevens liked to tank up on hard liquor and then ride the train. He knew the circle of people Hemingway’s sister socialized with in Key West; and, when he got there, he sought her out at a party and commenced a loud, drunken rant of disparaging remarks about her brother. Upset, Hemingway’s sister ran out of the house and called her brother at a pay phone. Within minutes, Hemingway was facing Stevens, who put all his woozy strength into landing a punch square on Hemingway’s jaw, barely hurting the younger man but breaking his own hand in the process. To his credit, Hemingway followed his attacker to the hospital and promised he wouldn’t file a police report and put Stevens’ job in danger.

   As Stevens lay in the hospital the two writers shared their poetry with each other. Stevens would later say that Hemingway was a “good poet” but a “criminal poet.”

                                                                                                                Max H. Peters
                                                                                                                Publisher and Editor