| Description |
xii, 200 pages ; 23 cm |
| Summary |
"In Twenty Questions, one of America's finest poet-critics leads readers into the mysteries of poetry: how it draws on our lives, and how it leads us back into them. In a series of linked essays progressing from the autobiographical to the critical - and closing with a remarkable translation of Horace's Ars Poetica unavailable elsewhere - J.D. McClatchy's latest book offers an intimate and illuminating look into the poetic mind."--BOOK JACKET. "McClatchy begins with a portrait of his development as a poet, and provides vibrant details about some of those who helped shape his sensibility - from Anne Sexton in her final days, to Harold Bloom, his enigmatic teacher at Yale, to James Merrill, a wise and witty mentor. All of these glimpses into McClatchy's personal history enhance our understanding of a coming of age from ingenuous reader to accomplished poet-critic."--BOOK JACKET. "Later sections range through poetry past and present - from Emily Dickinson to Seamus Heaney and W.S. Merwin - with incisive criticism generously interspersed with vivid anecdotes about McClatchy's encounters with other poets' lives and work. A critical unpacking of Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Miss Blount," for instance, is interwoven with a compassionate psychological portrait of a brilliant poet plagued by both romantic longings and debilitating physical deformities. There are surprising takes on the literary imagination as well: a look at Elizabeth Bishop through her letters, and a tribute to the Broadway lyrics of Stephen Sondheim."--Jacket. |
| Contents |
A word first -- Reading -- Dreaming -- My fountain pen -- Commonplaces -- Twenty questions -- Reading Pope -- Aspects of "Battle-Piece" -- Woman in white -- Wildness asking for ceremony -- At her other desk -- Laughter in the soul -- Songs of a curmudgeon -- The exile's song -- Chiselled breath -- Sitting here strangely on top of the sunlight -- The lost Upland -- Encountering the sublime -- Braving the elements -- Masters -- The art of poetry. |
| Subject |
McClatchy, J. D., 1945-2018 -- Authorship.
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Poetry.
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| ISBN |
023111172X alkaline paper |
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