In this honest and compelling collection of autobiographical essays, poet Jonathan Holden writes about sex, baseball, and summer camp; about parents who keep their distance; about the mistakes of adolescence; and about the national romance with guns. Most of all, however, he writes about the realities of having a twin brother who is gay and the excruciating pains he took to avoid being mistaken "for a fairy." Illustrating his points with his own poems, Holden creates a book that is not only a critique of homophobia (his gay problem and ours) but a wider questioning of American cultural...
In this honest and compelling collection of autobiographical essays, poet Jonathan Holden writes about sex, baseball, and summer camp; about parents w...
Are we witnessing the death of American poetry? Many critics have charged as much, pointing to a poetry that is increasingly marginal, specialized, and cloistered. Challenging such doomsayers, Jonathan Holden offers a hopeful appraisal of the current state of American poetry. Examining the reasons behind the loss of readership and diminished status of poetry in America, Holden blames the advent of modernism and the institutionalization of the modernist tradition in university English departments. Although in many ways the American university's overwhelming support of poetry has left the...
Are we witnessing the death of American poetry? Many critics have charged as much, pointing to a poetry that is increasingly marginal, specialized,...
