In the Poetry Blues, the late William Matthews holds forth on a medley of topics ranging from jazz to nude photography, Byron to Elizabeth Bishop, opera to Emerson. Throughout, Matthews writes about his love of music, language, poetry, and art while illuminating the subtle and important ways in which the things about which he feels passionately help to define and shape him. The book begins with a candid autobiographical essay, followed by an interview on the influence of jazz music on the poet's early work. Further into the collection, Matthews delves into the nature of the epigram...
In the Poetry Blues, the late William Matthews holds forth on a medley of topics ranging from jazz to nude photography, Byron to Elizabeth Bis...
"By the end of the book, Ashbery has laid out not only a course in contemporary poetics but a portrait of the artist teaching himself to become a thoroughly Modernist poet---in small bites, easy to savor, easy to digest." ---Los Angeles Times Book Review "This is a marvelous book by one of our greatest poets. Reading John Ashbery's Selected Prose is like listening to a brilliant talker who not only keeps us entertained and laughing, but who also has wise things to say about all sorts of interesting subjects." ---Charles Simic "At last Many of the fugitive...
"By the end of the book, Ashbery has laid out not only a course in contemporary poetics but a portrait of the artist teaching himself to become a thor...
"Orpheus in the Bronx not only extols the freedom language affords us; it embodies that freedom, enacting poetry's greatest gift---the power to recognize ourselves as something other than what we are. These bracing arguments were written by a poet who sings." ---James Longenbach
A highly acute writer, scholar, editor, and critic, Reginald Shepherd brings to his work the sensibilities of a classicist and a contemporary theorist, an inheritor of the American high modernist canon, and a poet drawing and playing on popular culture, while simultaneously venturing into formal...
"Orpheus in the Bronx not only extols the freedom language affords us; it embodies that freedom, enacting poetry's greatest gift---the power...
In Show Me Your Environment, a penetrating yet personable collection of critical essays, David Baker explores how a poem works, how a poet thinks, and how the art of poetry has evolved and is still evolving as a highly diverse, spacious, and inclusive art form. The opening essays offer contemplations on the environment of poetry from thoughts on physical places and regions as well as the inner aesthetic environment. Next, Baker looks at the highly distinctive achievements and styles of poets ranging from George Herbert and Emily Dickinson through poets writing today. Finally, he...
In Show Me Your Environment, a penetrating yet personable collection of critical essays, David Baker explores how a poem works, how a poet t...
