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Interviews derived from four decades of this American poet's distinguished career
In this introduction to the works of Pulitzer Prize-winner Kunitz, Orr sets out his major concerns, techniques, and accomplishments. He explores the biographical sources of Kunitz' work, the strategies he uses to convert life into legend, and the theory and tactic of the dramatic lyric which Kunitz practiced and perfected. Orr delves into all the volumes of Kunitz's poetry--"Intellectual Things," "Passport to the War," "This Garland, Danger" "The Testing-Tree," "The Layers" and "The Poems of Stanley Kunitz, 1928-1978"--and presents detailed explications of major poems. He identifies three unifying legends in the poems: the legend of the father, of the mother/beloved, and of the self's being. Using personal history and psychology in his poetry, Kunitz anticipates the confessional poets of a later generation (Lowell, Plath, and Berryman). ISBN 0-231-05234-0 : $22.50.
“He again tops the crowd—he surpasses himself, the old iron brought to the white heat of simplicity.” That's what Robert Lowell said of the poetry of Stanley Kunitz (1905–2006) and his evolving artistry. The interviews and conversations contained in this volume derive from four decades of Kunitz's distinguished career. They touch on aesthetic motifs in his poetry, the roots of his work, his friendships in the sister arts of painting and sculpture, his interactions with Lowell and Theodore Roethke, and his comments on a host of poets: John Keats, Walt Whitman, Randall Jarrell, Wallace Stevens, and Anna Akhmatova. Kunitz emerged from a mid-sized industrial town in central Massachusetts...
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Since 1900, the average life expectancy in the developed world has almost doubled, from 45 to 80. "We are almost a new species," declared the English writer V.S. Pritchett, while pointing out that this means "most of us have to face the prospect of a long old age before we die." Pritchett is one of five great writers--along with Stanley Kunitz, Doris Lessing, Mavis Gallant and Russell Baker--whose novels, short stories, poems and essays about old age, written in old age, are examined in this book. Born between 1900 (Pritchett) and 1925 (Baker), these writers are members of the first generation of the 20th century, and of the first generation of writers able to write about old age from experience. In their later works we read about growing old as reported by the old, not as imagined by the young and middle-aged. They wrote about old age not as a discrete stage of life, but as a continuation--another context in which to pursue the themes of their earlier poems, novels, stories and essays. And those who had written about love--a central theme of fiction and poetry--now wrote about love in old age.
Gathers poems and reminiscences by friends and colleagues of the American poet.
This four-volume reference work surveys American literature from the early 20th century to the present day, featuring a diverse range of American works and authors and an expansive selection of primary source materials. Bringing useful and engaging material into the classroom, this four-volume set covers more than a century of American literary history—from 1900 to the present. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context profiles authors and their works and provides overviews of literary movements and genres through which readers will understand the historical, cultural, and political contexts that have shaped American writing. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Ameri...
Introducing twenty new poems and bringing together works from previous volumes, this collection of 150 poems, arranged in reverse chronological order, represents a half century of work by the distinguished contemporary poet.