Author: Eric Ormsby
Publisher: The Porcupine's Quill
ISBN: 0889843341
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
`A poem, I thought, is a physical object, as tactile as a statue. I began to consider poems in textual terms; there were shaggy surfaces, knobbly ones, mere veneers as sleek as glassine, but my favourites were those in which a complex and tensile music prevailed...' Eric Ormsby, that gracious, intelligent and occasionally fractious poet, has produced another vigorous collection of essays to shake North American literary criticism from its lethargy. Opinionated and hilarious, Ormsby indulges his wide-ranging interests and discusses writers from Bob Dylan to S. D. Goitein, La Fontaine to Leo Tolstoy. Fine Incisions also draws connections between Ormsby's literary criticism and his travel writing; as his essay `Shadow Language' notes, the music of another language can seep pleasurably into a writer's work (and, as Ormsby also notes, the lack of such linguistic overlap cheapens much of contemporary poetry!). Although the topics vary widely, Ormsby's viewpoint remains sharp and uncompromising, and his familiarity with North American, British and Arabic literary cultures informs each essay and leads to new and provocative reflection. Most of all, each essay is an expression of Ormsby's own romance with language, and his devotion is clear in his adamant insistence on all writers' very best.
Fine Incisions
Author: Eric Ormsby
Publisher: The Porcupine's Quill
ISBN: 0889843341
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
`A poem, I thought, is a physical object, as tactile as a statue. I began to consider poems in textual terms; there were shaggy surfaces, knobbly ones, mere veneers as sleek as glassine, but my favourites were those in which a complex and tensile music prevailed...' Eric Ormsby, that gracious, intelligent and occasionally fractious poet, has produced another vigorous collection of essays to shake North American literary criticism from its lethargy. Opinionated and hilarious, Ormsby indulges his wide-ranging interests and discusses writers from Bob Dylan to S. D. Goitein, La Fontaine to Leo Tolstoy. Fine Incisions also draws connections between Ormsby's literary criticism and his travel writing; as his essay `Shadow Language' notes, the music of another language can seep pleasurably into a writer's work (and, as Ormsby also notes, the lack of such linguistic overlap cheapens much of contemporary poetry!). Although the topics vary widely, Ormsby's viewpoint remains sharp and uncompromising, and his familiarity with North American, British and Arabic literary cultures informs each essay and leads to new and provocative reflection. Most of all, each essay is an expression of Ormsby's own romance with language, and his devotion is clear in his adamant insistence on all writers' very best.
Publisher: The Porcupine's Quill
ISBN: 0889843341
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
`A poem, I thought, is a physical object, as tactile as a statue. I began to consider poems in textual terms; there were shaggy surfaces, knobbly ones, mere veneers as sleek as glassine, but my favourites were those in which a complex and tensile music prevailed...' Eric Ormsby, that gracious, intelligent and occasionally fractious poet, has produced another vigorous collection of essays to shake North American literary criticism from its lethargy. Opinionated and hilarious, Ormsby indulges his wide-ranging interests and discusses writers from Bob Dylan to S. D. Goitein, La Fontaine to Leo Tolstoy. Fine Incisions also draws connections between Ormsby's literary criticism and his travel writing; as his essay `Shadow Language' notes, the music of another language can seep pleasurably into a writer's work (and, as Ormsby also notes, the lack of such linguistic overlap cheapens much of contemporary poetry!). Although the topics vary widely, Ormsby's viewpoint remains sharp and uncompromising, and his familiarity with North American, British and Arabic literary cultures informs each essay and leads to new and provocative reflection. Most of all, each essay is an expression of Ormsby's own romance with language, and his devotion is clear in his adamant insistence on all writers' very best.
James Merrill
Author: Langdon Hammer
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375413332
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 978
Book Description
"A biography of the acclaimed poet James Merrill"--
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375413332
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 978
Book Description
"A biography of the acclaimed poet James Merrill"--
A Whole World
Author: James Merrill
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 110187550X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 745
Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • The selected correspondence of the brilliant poet, one of the twentieth century's last great letter writers. "I don't keep a journal, not after the first week," James Merrill asserted in a letter while on a trip around the world. "Letters have got to bear all the burden." A vivacious correspondent, whether abroad, where avid curiosity and fond memory frequently took him, or at home, he wrote eagerly and often, to family and lifelong friends, American and Greek lovers, confidants in literature and art about everything that mattered—aesthetics, opera and painting, housekeeping and cooking, the comedy of social life, the mysteries of the Ouija board and the spirit world, and psychological and moral dilemmas—in funny, dashing, unrevised missives, composed to entertain himself as well as his recipients. On a personal nemesis: "the ambivalence I live with. It worries me less and less. It becomes the very stuff of my art"; on a lunch for Wallace Stevens given by Blanche Knopf: "It had been decided by one and all that nothing but small talk would be allowed"; on romance in his late fifties: "I must stop acting like an orphan gobbling cookies in fear of the plate's being taken away"; on great books: "they burn us like radium, with their decisiveness, their terrible understanding of what happens." Merrill's daily chronicle of love and loss is unfettered, self-critical, full of good gossip, and attuned to the wicked irony, the poignant detail—a natural extension of the great poet's voice.
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 110187550X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 745
Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • The selected correspondence of the brilliant poet, one of the twentieth century's last great letter writers. "I don't keep a journal, not after the first week," James Merrill asserted in a letter while on a trip around the world. "Letters have got to bear all the burden." A vivacious correspondent, whether abroad, where avid curiosity and fond memory frequently took him, or at home, he wrote eagerly and often, to family and lifelong friends, American and Greek lovers, confidants in literature and art about everything that mattered—aesthetics, opera and painting, housekeeping and cooking, the comedy of social life, the mysteries of the Ouija board and the spirit world, and psychological and moral dilemmas—in funny, dashing, unrevised missives, composed to entertain himself as well as his recipients. On a personal nemesis: "the ambivalence I live with. It worries me less and less. It becomes the very stuff of my art"; on a lunch for Wallace Stevens given by Blanche Knopf: "It had been decided by one and all that nothing but small talk would be allowed"; on romance in his late fifties: "I must stop acting like an orphan gobbling cookies in fear of the plate's being taken away"; on great books: "they burn us like radium, with their decisiveness, their terrible understanding of what happens." Merrill's daily chronicle of love and loss is unfettered, self-critical, full of good gossip, and attuned to the wicked irony, the poignant detail—a natural extension of the great poet's voice.
The Changing Light at Sandover
Author: James Merrill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 560
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 560
Book Description
A Reader's Guide to James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover
Author: Robert Polito
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472065240
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
An invaluable road map for the epic poem of our time
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472065240
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
An invaluable road map for the epic poem of our time
Collected Prose
Author: James Merrill
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 760
Book Description
Sample Text
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 760
Book Description
Sample Text
James Merrill, Essays in Criticism
Author: David Lehman
Publisher: Ithaca : Cornell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Merrill's trilogy, published in three separate volumes and reprinted in its entirety in The Changing Light at Sandover (Atheneum, 1982), provides the focal point and inspiration for these 11 essays. The authors cover Merrill's linguistic inventiveness and his love of puns and palindromes. Includes David Kalstone's essay on autobiographical details in Merrill's work, Rachel Jacoff's explanation of his debt to Dante and David Jackson's eyewitness account of Merrill transcribing messages at his Ouija board. ISBN 0-8014-1404-0 : $22.50.
Publisher: Ithaca : Cornell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Merrill's trilogy, published in three separate volumes and reprinted in its entirety in The Changing Light at Sandover (Atheneum, 1982), provides the focal point and inspiration for these 11 essays. The authors cover Merrill's linguistic inventiveness and his love of puns and palindromes. Includes David Kalstone's essay on autobiographical details in Merrill's work, Rachel Jacoff's explanation of his debt to Dante and David Jackson's eyewitness account of Merrill transcribing messages at his Ouija board. ISBN 0-8014-1404-0 : $22.50.
Mad Heart Be Brave
Author: Kazim Ali
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472053507
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
New essays, both personal and critical, on the work of beloved Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472053507
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
New essays, both personal and critical, on the work of beloved Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali
Last Looks, Last Books
Author: Helen Vendler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400834325
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165
Book Description
Modern American poets writing in the face of death In Last Looks, Last Books, the eminent critic Helen Vendler examines the ways in which five great modern American poets, writing their final books, try to find a style that does justice to life and death alike. With traditional religious consolations no longer available to them, these poets must invent new ways to express the crisis of death, as well as the paradoxical coexistence of a declining body and an undiminished consciousness. In The Rock, Wallace Stevens writes simultaneous narratives of winter and spring; in Ariel, Sylvia Plath sustains melodrama in cool formality; and in Day by Day, Robert Lowell subtracts from plenitude. In Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop is both caught and freed, while James Merrill, in A Scattering of Salts, creates a series of self-portraits as he dies, representing himself by such things as a Christmas tree, human tissue on a laboratory slide, and the evening/morning star. The solution for one poet will not serve for another; each must invent a bridge from an old style to a new one. Casting a last look at life as they contemplate death, these modern writers enrich the resources of lyric poetry.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400834325
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165
Book Description
Modern American poets writing in the face of death In Last Looks, Last Books, the eminent critic Helen Vendler examines the ways in which five great modern American poets, writing their final books, try to find a style that does justice to life and death alike. With traditional religious consolations no longer available to them, these poets must invent new ways to express the crisis of death, as well as the paradoxical coexistence of a declining body and an undiminished consciousness. In The Rock, Wallace Stevens writes simultaneous narratives of winter and spring; in Ariel, Sylvia Plath sustains melodrama in cool formality; and in Day by Day, Robert Lowell subtracts from plenitude. In Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop is both caught and freed, while James Merrill, in A Scattering of Salts, creates a series of self-portraits as he dies, representing himself by such things as a Christmas tree, human tissue on a laboratory slide, and the evening/morning star. The solution for one poet will not serve for another; each must invent a bridge from an old style to a new one. Casting a last look at life as they contemplate death, these modern writers enrich the resources of lyric poetry.
Proses
Author: Carolyn Kizer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
In these essays and reviews, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet assays the work of many contemporary poets including Hayden Carruth, Denise Levertov, James Merrill, Louise Bogan, Robert Creeley, Marge Piercy, John Berryman and others. She offers the first major American assessment of the English poet John Clare, and discusses the influence of Alexander Pope on her own poetry. She also contributes a major autobiographical essay.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
In these essays and reviews, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet assays the work of many contemporary poets including Hayden Carruth, Denise Levertov, James Merrill, Louise Bogan, Robert Creeley, Marge Piercy, John Berryman and others. She offers the first major American assessment of the English poet John Clare, and discusses the influence of Alexander Pope on her own poetry. She also contributes a major autobiographical essay.