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Book

American originality : essays on poetry

Call Number

  • 814 G5673 (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Physical Description

189 pages ; 22 cm

Uniform Title

Essays. Selections

Summary

"A luminous collection of essays from one of our most original and influential poets. Five decades after her debut poetry collection, Firstborn, Louise Glück is a towering figure in American letters. Written with the same probing, analytic control that has long distinguished her poetry, American Originality is Glück's second book of essays--her first, Proofs and Theories, won the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. Glück's moving and disabusing lyricism is on full display in this decisive new collection. From its opening pages, American Originality forces readers to consider contemporary poetry and its demigods in radical, unconsoling, and ultimately very productive ways. Determined to wrest ample, often contradictory meaning from our current literary discourse, Glück comprehends and destabilizes notions of 'narcissism' and 'genius' that are unique to the American literary climate. This includes erudite analyses of the poets who have interested her throughout her own career, such as Rilke, Pinsky, Chiasson, and Dobyns, and introductions to the first books of poets like Dana Levin, Peter Streckfus, Spencer Reece, and Richard Siken. Forceful, revealing, challenging, and instructive, American Originality is a seminal critical achievement"--

Contents

  • American originality
  • American narcissism
  • Ersatz thought
  • On Buddenbrooks
  • Story tellers
  • On realism
  • The culture of healing
  • Ten introductions. In the surgical theatre / Dana Levin ; The clerk's tale / Spencer Reece ; The cuckoo / Peter Streckfus ; Crush / Richard Siken ; Green squall / Jay Hopler ; Frail-craft / Jessica Fisher ; The earth in the attic / Fady Joudah ; It is daylight / Arda Collins ; Juvenilia / Ken Chen ; Radial symmetry / Katherine Larson
  • On revenge
  • Estrangement
  • Fear of happiness.

Subjects

Genres

Essays.