Writing was the central passion of Emerson s life. While his thoughts on the craft are well developed in The Poet, The American Scholar, Nature, Goethe, and Persian Poetry, less well known are the many pages in his private journals devoted to the relationship between writing and reading. Here, for the first time, is the Concord Sage s energetic, exuberant, and unconventional advice on the idea of writing, focused and distilled by the preeminent Emerson biographer at work today.
Emerson advised that the way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent....

An indispensable introduction to and guide through the work of a poet equal in power and sensibility to Shakespeare and Milton. Like them, Stevens shaped a new language, fashioning an instrument adequate to describing a completely changed environment of fact, and extending perception through his poems.