Book Description
Winner of the 2005 Lambda Literary Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award: the first and "essential" (Choice) biography of the author, poet, and American icon of womanhood, black arts, and survival.

During her lifetime, Audre Lorde (1934-1992), author of the landmark Cancer Journals, created a mythic identity for herself that retains its vitality to this day. Drawing from the private archives of the poet's estate and numerous interviews, Alexis De Veaux demystifies Lorde's iconic status, charting her conservative childhood in Harlem; her early marriage to a white, gay man with whom she had two children; her emergence as an outspoken black feminist lesbian; and her canonization as a seminal poet of American literature. 18 photographs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Unafraid to Fight
Alexis DeVeaux presents a comprehensive account of self-described feminist, lesbian, and poet warrior, Audre Lorde.The author pulls together a myriad of published documents, unpublished journal entries by Audre Lorde herself, and a host of interviews with personal friends and family members to create a well documented look at the poet's life.The book is divided into two major sections called "lives."The first life begins prior to Audre's birth, and highlights some aspects of her parent's early life, their eventual marriage and move from the Caribbean to the United States.This family background helps readers understand Audre's nearly lifelong quest to come to terms with her relationship with her often emotionally detached parents.This portion of the book also details information about Audre's childhood, educational background, and young adult life.We learn about Audre's marriage to a white, gay, man and their eventual divorce and follow her process of "coming out" regarding her own lesbianism.Her long-term relationship with a white woman, Frances Clayton, and the challenges associated with raising a bi-racial son and daughter in a lesbian household during an era of rampant, overt racism and sexism was also discussed.DeVeaux also takes time to highlight some of Audre Lorde's flaws, thus providing a somewhat more balanced view of the author.Her professional career as a poet develops slowly, and the evolution of her writing career parallels the evolution of her political views and personal growth.

The second section of the book, "The Second Life," continues to explore her career development, chronicles her battles with cancer in more detail, and ends with her death. Audre Lorde supported freedom and equality for all, regardless of race, gender, class, or sexual orientation.However, because of her strong views and personal lifestyle, she often found herself on the fringes.Many white feminists were uncomfortable with her views on race, while those involved in the black power movement tended to be uncomfortable with her feminist ideology and her lesbianism.Yet she used her own struggles, particularly her battle with cancer, as a means to educate, motivate, and inspire.

I enjoyed WARRIOR POET and was impressed by Alexis DeVeaux's attention to detail and the time she spent helping readers understand the social and political climate of the times.There were times when I felt she went a little too far "setting the stage" and wanted to read more about Audre and less about other poets, or politics.Audre seemed to use her identity to take on very public battles for women's rights, gay rights, and so forth.But I found myself wanting to know more about how her children handled their mother's public persona.I also wondered how her very conservative, Catholic mother and her other siblings responded to Audre's lifestyle, and this issue was surprisingly never addressed.In spite of its sometimes academic feel, this is a must read for anyone that wants to learn more about an important literary figure.

Reviewed by Stacey Seay
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Thanks for looking at this
I hope to inspire more people to understand the value of African American Poetry. For more info, see: www.michaelrstrickland.com ... Read more

Book Description
A look at the life and thought of Wally Chappell serves many purposes.Here is a preacher who challenges others to make the most of their lives.A progressive who breaks the stereotype of the Ultra-conservative minister, a prophet who balances criticism of the social order with hope for the future, and a poet whose way with words lifts the spirits of those who hear him. Chappell's influence on other people is illustrated in the story of an ex-convict who credits Chappell with turning his life around. The book includes Chappell'[s views on theology, the church, and contemporary issues, contains two of his sermons and many of his poems. ... Read more

Amazon.com
This biography appears in the midst of a small Sassoon revival. Although not the sprightliest of writers, Jean Moorcroft Wilson gives a comprehensive and well-rounded impression of Sassoon, drawing on much new material, including both sides of his correspondence with T.E. Lawrence. "Unlike the many writers who lead sedentary lives," Wilson notes, "[Sassoon] was a man of action caught up in the bloodiest conflict in history." In the early 1920s, still glowing from the success of his poems of the First World War, Sassoon had imagined he would write a "Madame Bovary dealing with sexual inversion." But the poet who patrolled no man's land at night and whose initially romantic verses gradually came to encompass all the horrors of trench warfare could not find the courage to declare his love for men. One of the benefits of this late biography, as Wilson points out, is that she can now write openly of what Sassoon could not. --Regina Marler Book Description
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), soldier, poet, and witness to a century of war, is an icon of the twentieth century; Jean Moorcroft Wilson is the leading authority on him. In this two-volume biography, she offers her definitive analysis of his life and works. The first critically acclaimed volume, covering Sassoon's life up until the end of the Great War, offers rich material on his poetry, his patriotism, and his anti-war stance.In volume two, Moorcroft Wilson reveals the truth of Sassoon's life after the armistice, when most people thought he was dead; the story includes a series of love affairs with such larger-than-life characters as Queen Victoria's great-grandson, Prince Phillip of Hesse, the flamboyant Ivor Novello, and the exotic and bejeweled Stephen Tennant. But this was also the period of Sassoon's close friendships with the greatest literary figures of the age, including Hardy, Beerbohm, E.M. Forster, and T.E. Lawrence.
Written with the cooperation of Siegfried Sassoon's family and friends, and with access to a mass of private and unpublished material, poems, diaries, letters, and photographs, this meticulously researched biography will be the standard work on Sassoon's life and legacy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Engrossing
I'm ashamed to admit I'm not much of a biography reader. I can actually count on one hand the number of bio's I've completed and they have all been rather fluffy. After reading Pat Barker's wonderful WWI trilogy I was moved to find out more about Sassoon and discovered this book through a library search. I was a bit daunted by its length but have managed to read almost all of it in a couple of weeks. It reads quite easily and has actually at times left me reluctant to put it down. I am inspired to read biographies of Dr.Rivers, Robert Ross, and Robert Graves. I have also begun a better appreciation of poetry in general. Ms.Wilson writes on the assumption that her readers have knowledge of the technical aspects of poetry which I definitely lack. But she can be forgiven that. I am looking forward to reading Sassoon's memoirs and fiction. I will definitely read other installments of this fascinating biography.

Criticism or Biography
Ms Wilson needs to make up her mind whether to write a book of Literary Criticism or a biography.The book suffers from too much critical analysis of Sassoon's poetry and not enough about his life.Either he was an extremely boring and prosaic poet or Ms. Wilson needs to delve deeper into his intellectual and emotional development - really his cricket exploits and his hunting prowess does not lend anything to the very essence of his life.Ms. Wilson's prose is turgid and repetitive. An extremely disappointing work.

Splendid biography of the great war poet, hero and sportsman
The biography is artfully crafted with an entertaining balance between story and documentation. I found the level of detail fascinating and not at all constraining, very much like enjoying following brushstrokes in an impressionist landscape. The book broadened and deepened my appreciation of the man, the times, the War and the literary and cultural environment of the first two decades of 20th century Britain.

If Ms Wilson follows with further volumes of Sassoons biography, count me in as an enthusiastic reader!

A much needed biography
I was stunned several years ago to realize there was no modern biography of Sassoon so I was really looking forward to this book and in the end I was really pleased with it.It is perhaps a little too detailed(descriptions of the personalities of Sassoon's schoolmasters, etc.) andshe occasionally jumps around chronologically but Wilson does bring Sassoonto life.Rather than emphasizing his sexuality she puts it into contextand she follows his emotional development through his poetry.She alsodoes an excellent job sorting out the confusion of wartime events.I'mlooking forward to the next volume of this biography and I'd like to readher bio of Charles Hamilton Sorley, another war poet. ... Read more

Book Description
This first volume of what will be a full-scale portrait presents Ezra Pound as a very determined and energetic young genius setting out to make his way both as a poet and as a force for civilization in England and America in the years before, during and just after the 1914-18 war.In a clear and lively narrative A. David Moody weaves a story of Pound's early life and loves; of his education in America; of his apprentice years in London, devoted to training himself to be as a good and powerful a poet as he had it in him to become; of his learning there from W. B.Yeats and Ford Madox Hueffer, then forming his own Imagiste group, and going on from that to join with Wyndham Lewis in his Vorticism, and to link up also with James Joyce and T. S. Eliot to create the modernist vortex in the midst of the 1914-18 war. We see Pound scraping a living by writing prose for individualist and socialist periodicals, and emerging as not only an inspired literary critic, but as a critic of music and society as well. Above all, Moody shows Pound's evolution as a poet from the derivative idealism and aestheticism of his precocious youth into the truly original author of Homage to Sextus Propertius and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. We find Pound established by 1920 as a force for revolution in poetry; as a force for the liberation of the individual from stifling conventions; and as a force for renaissance in America.We find him becoming committed, moreover, to the reform of the capitalist system in the name of economic justice for all.This is the first biography to put Pound's poetry at the heart of his existence, where he himself placed it, and to view his extraordinarily active life, his loves, and his creative effort, as a single complex drama.The altogether new and comprehensive account of all of his poems, from the earliest through Cathay and up to Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and the first Cantos, will illuminate his poetry and make it more accessible.With that there is an exceptionally clear and cogent analysis of the ideas informing his Imagisme and his Vorticism; and of the ideas informing his commitments to the freedom and fulfilment of the individual, to a cultural renaissance, and to social and economic reform. The poetry, the prose writings, and the personal life are all woven together into a brilliant narrative portrait of the poet as a young man.A second volume will carry on the narrative of his life and works from 1921, the year in which he took up residence in Paris. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Combining empathetic insight into the poet's life with intimate understanding of the poet's work, exhaustive research with a storyteller's flair, Freedman creates portraits of the young Rilke living out the poetic imagination, an older Rilke realizing his calling as one of the century's greatest poetic visionaries,culminating in such works as the Duino Elegies and Letters to a Young Poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

a postcard of a church
Some biographers get inside the spiritual life of their subjects and are able to capture its intimate movements in such a way that the life takes on a magical coherence and wholeness. Others, less sympathetically endowed, are content to record external circumstances and events, with perhaps some brief overtures toward explaining inner motives and passions. One would think a poet of Rilke's fierce inwardness demands primarily the former form of biography - and he does - but the latter form also offers some interesting insights, especially for readers who might be unfamiliar with the milieu he lived and worked in. This biography is very much in the latter camp. Freedman's prose suffers from frequent bouts of groaningly bad academese ("His words adumbrate the divine tension between Word and World" - yuck!), but his narrative does give the imaginative reader some purchase on the shaping forces behind many of Rilke's most powerful works. The last few hundred pages are something of a slog since you know that felicitous insights into Rilke's inner life (and there are some) will be consistently overwhelmed by a rather distant-sounding reportage of his travels, housing troubles, and publishing concerns. For a poet whose mission was to transform external vicissitude into internal truth... the effect is something like viewing a postcard of a church. Rilke was notorious for flooding his lovers with passion before withdrawing from their intimacy, and in a way Freedman, who never really seems to get under Rilke's skin (although it it is clear he would like to), takes his place among those spurned souls.

messy
This is a sprawling, lazy account. It was moderately useful as a complement to Donald Prater's far more concentrated 'A ringing glass', but if I hadn't read that book first I wouldn't have formed much of a picture of Rilke's life. There are a few interesting stories found here which don'tappear in the other book, but on the whole it is totally inferior.

Life of a Poet:An Engaging Biography
Freedman does an outstanding job of chronicling the life of Rilke without an over-analytical style that so often plagues other artistic biographies.I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it to anyoneinterested in Rilke, the most important German-language poet since Goethe.

Extraordinary tale of an extraordinary man
This biography sensitively and thoroughly investigates the life of Rilke.We follow not only his life's events, but his intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and poetic development, all of which are closely intertwined.Freedman himself writes the tale so well--it is a pleasure to read!Thebook features plenty of photographs of Rilke, his family and friends. Rilke was a complicated and troubled man, but the wonder is seeing how outof such human frailties arose a transcendent body of work. ... Read more

Book Description
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

Book Description
A Disquisition On The Object Of His Sonnets; And A History Of The Manners, Customs, And Amusement, Superstitions, Poetry, And Elegant Literature Of His Age. In Two Volumes. ... Read more

Book Description

When Langston Hughes was a boy, His grandmother told him true stories of how African people were captured in Africa and brought to America enslaved. She told him about their fight for freedom and justice.

Langston loved his grandmother's stories. To learn more stories and bear more beautiful language, he began to read books. He fell in love with books and decided that one day he would write stories too, true stories about Black people.

When he was only fourteen, Langston wrote his first poem, and for the rest of his life he was always writing -- stories and essays and, most of all, poems. He wrote about Black people as he saw them: happy, sad, mad, and beautiful. Through his writing he fought for freedom from inequality and injustice; and his gift of words inspired and influenced many other writers.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker was one writer Langston influenced. In this moving and richly detailed portrait she celebrates the life of an extraordinary man. Accompanied by stunning paintings by artist Catherine Deeter, Langston Hughes: American Poet will introduce a whole new generation to the life and works of a great African American Poet of the twentieth century, and one of the most important poets of all time.

Customer Reviews (2)

American poet
This is a very touching book for both children and adults alike. The portrait of America in another era is accurate and informative for young minds to understand how things were once upon atime. The biographical sketch relays the influnces early on in Langston Hughes life which shaped him to become one of the great poets of the twentieth century, in spite of racism. His father lived in Mexico and had a disregard for black people whoseperated himself to the extent of living in Mexico. Although he(Langston's father) did well for himself in Mexico he did not support his son. Themajor exception was sending him regretfully to Columbia University which Langston eventually dropped out of much to hisfathers displeasure. Hughes felt isolated and much more relaxed in nearby Harlem. Langston Hughes was a man of letters that he inherited from the story telling his grandmother told him. His love for his culture translated into many books of poetry. Alice Walkeris the writer of this children's book and the author of "The Color Purple," and was tremendously influenced by Hughes himself who she met as a college student.The illustrations are prettyrealistic and further document the story. The book is easy enough for youngsters and may also be good material for middle school readers who have not yet achieved grade level profiency. It is an inspirational story that may get a youngster motivated to write or read further.

An excellent picturebook biography
Catherine Deeter's paintings accompany this celebration of poet Langston Hughes' life, which reads like fiction as it surveys the influences on Hughes' career and the motivations behind his writings and life. An excellent picturebook biography, this requires reading skills but will appeal to grades 2-4. ... Read more

Book Description
A lyrical biography of a Cuban slave who escaped to become a celebrated poet. Born into the household of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in 1797, Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years by the side of a woman who made him call her Mama, even though he had a mama of his own. Denied an education, young Juan still showed an exceptional talent for poetry. His verses reflect the beauty of his world, but they also expose its hideous cruelty.Powerful, haunting poems and breathtaking illustrations create a portrait of a life in which even the pain of slavery could not extinguish the capacity for hope. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Fabulous read
You learn about the life of this child and experience his triumph over adversity.The book makes you want to read the child's original words even though they are in Spanish.

HI MR. COSBY
How would you feel if your former master, who had loved you and cared for you like you were her own child, had said that once she died, you and your family would be free. Happy, right? Well what if no one paid any attention and you were sold to another master who punishes you for crimes you didn't commit?
That is the dilemma Juan Fransisco Manzano faces when his former owner, who took him to parties and had him wow her guest with his uncanny ability to recite poems and verses from the bible. At his baptism, Dona Beatriz, his former owner, declares that once she dies, he and his family will be free, for the price of 300 pesos, and any new-born babies will be born free. But once Dona Beatriz dies, Juan's family discovers they don't have enough money to buy Juan's freedom. So he is sold to La Marquesa De Prado Amendo, whose son, Don Nicolas, takes a liking to Juan, and befriends him. But La Marquesa frequently and brutally punishes Juan for sneaking peaks at her books. But she is grateful enough to let Juan watch her sons take art classes, and Don Nicholas gives Juan some parchment and a stub of crayon to draw with. Eventually, Don Nicholas helps give Juan the courage to run away, and Juan flees in search of his mother.
In really enjoyed this book for three reasons: the poetry, the character development, and the Spanish vocabulary sprinkled into the text.
The first reason I liked this book was in was written in free verse poetry form. This made the book very quick and easy to read, which made me like it more. It was also very unique, and was very well done.
The second reason I liked this book was the character development, mainly Juan. He grows up a lot in the book, from age eleven to age sixteen. But he also develops, by not abiding to La Marquesa's rules or caring about the consequences. He also learns that he doesn't need to keep sneakily buying pen and paper using the money he receives at parties. He can just store all the knowledge in his head.
And finally, I enjoyed the Spanish vocabulary sprinkled in. I take Spanish class on B days and found that the Spanish words were very useful. I also like how the author used in text definitions to explain to you what the word was.
In conclusion, I thought this was a fabulous book and would recommend it to someone looking for either a book written in poetry of a book with Spanish sprinkled into the text.

C. Davidson

Soy Cuba
The verse novel is a tricky fickle thing.Though no one to the best of my knowledge has ever put down the rules that govern the creation of a verse novel, there are always a couple unwritten understandings.No verse novel should tell its tale through poetry when it would make more sense to tell it through prose.Also, just breaking up a bunch of sentences into lines doesn't mean you're writing poetry or anything.The ideal verse novel is one where it makes sense to write a story through poetry AND just happens to have an ear for beautiful language.Such is the case with Margaraita's, "The Poet Slave of Cuba".In the book it says that, "The life of Juan Francisco Manzano haunted her for years before she finally realized that to do justice to the Poet Slave's story, she needed to write it in verse".The result is an achingly beautiful and horrific story that deserves to be read by teens everywhere.

Born a slave in Cuba in 1797, Juan Francisco Manzano grew up the toast of his owner Dona Beatriz.His ability to memorize speeches, plays, and words of all sorts made him a kind of sought over pet to the Spanish aristocracy.Though she promised to grant him his freedom when she died and she allowed both his parents to buy their freedom, Juan Francisco remained a slave after Dona Beatriz's death and was handed over to the dangerously psychotic Marquesa de Prado Ameno.The Marquesa resents Juan from the moment he is put into her possession and every attempt he makes at reading or writing is put down with shocking violence.A biography told in poems, this book shows the worst of slavery's cruelties and the sheer will it takes to not only survive under such conditions but escape.

The text in the book alternates between different points of view on almost every page.In a sense, the villains have just as much of a say as the heroes.Juan, for his part, sometimes will have three pages in a row of thoughts, each with its own separate poem. Alongside this format are illustrations by Sean Qualls.Qualls has a style that usually doesn't do much for me.In this case, however, he's the perfect complement to Engle's tale.The white aristocracy with their blank eyes and sharp pointed teeth are positively horrific.These images magnify the storyline.Here, for example, are two ladders that lead suggestively against a wall.Now a shiny coin.Now a butterfly.They are rough unfinished drawings that show far better Juan's situation than any polished colored print could ever convey.

At first I was a little perturbed that for all the book's poetry and loveliness, I couldn't find any actual poetry by the real Juan Francisco Manzano.Then I reached the end of the title and in the back found that author Margarita Engle not only offers us a biography of the true Juan Francisco, but reprints his bibliographic details as well.

Now, there is a debate surrounding this book.It is not a debate that questions whether the story is told well or whether or not Engle gets her point across to the reader.It's more a question of audience.Though published by Henry Holt, Inc's young reader division, and not a specific teen imprint, there is little doubt in my mind that this is not exactly kiddie fare.It's repeatedly violent, often to extremes.There is more bloodshed, torture, screams, and pain in this book than you'll find in most children's literature.To put it plainly, this is the "Beloved", of kiddie lit.Which, when you think about it, doesn't make it very kid-friendly at all.Teens, on the other hand, will find much to appreciate here.Juan Francisco spends much of this book as a teen, after all.His thoughts and actions are not those of a young boy, but rather a man trapped in an untenable situation. As such, I'd steer this book clear of the shorter set and aim towards kids with some maturity.

You read about the main character's pain, and to some extent a kind of apathy has to take place or the story's too difficult to bear.As a reader, you actually find yourself wondering how a person could live under such grueling conditions without a hope of a reprieve and still want to live.And there is a moment in the book when someone says that good always triumphs over evil.That it is amazing that the devil even tries.Words like these and phrases of this sort have been turning about in my brain ever since I put, "The Poet Slave of Cuba" down.Engle's text has a kind of staying power that wordsmiths everywhere should envy.Envy and admire.

I guess I should point out that while, "The Poet Slave of Cuba" is well-written, smart, and beautiful, it is not a pleasant book to read.Teens who pick up this book should be informed right off the bat as to what the book consists of.Just the same, it's definitely one of the more honest treatises on slavery I've ever had the chance to read.Engle does a magnificent job with her subject.She does the man's memory proud. ... Read more

Book Description

At the time of his death in 1935, Edwin Arlington Robinson was regarded as the leading American poet-the equal of Frost and Stevens. In this biography, Scott Donaldson tells the intriguing story of this poet's life, based in large part on a previously unavailable trove of more than 3,000 personal letters, and recounts his profoundly important role in the development of modern American literature.

Born in 1869, the youngest son of a well-to-do family in Gardiner, Maine, Robinson had two brothers: Dean, a doctor who became a drug addict, and Herman, an alcoholic who squandered the family fortune. Robinson never married, but he fell in love as many as three times, most lastingly with the woman who would become his brother Herman's wife. Despite his shyness, Robinson made many close friends, and he repeatedly went out of his way to give them his support and encouragement.

Still, it was always poetry that drove him. He regarded writing poems as nothing less than his calling-what he had been put on earth to do. Struggling through long years of poverty and neglect, he achieved a voice and a subject matter all his own. He was the first to write about ordinary people and events-an honest butcher consumed by grief, a miser with "eyes like little dollars in the dark," ancient clerks in a dry goods store measuring out their days like bolts of cloth. In simple yet powerful rhetoric, he explored the interior worlds of the people around him.

Robinson was a major poet and a pivotal figure in the course of modern American literature, yet over the years his reputation has declined. With his biography, Donaldson returns this remarkable talent to the pantheon of great American poets and sheds new light on his enduring legacy.

Customer Reviews (3)

Review of Daonaldson, Scott: Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life
Review of Donaldson, Scott, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life



This book is important partly because it is the first biography in 40 years of the early twentieth-century's most renowned American poet.Thoroughly researched by an experienced biographer, Prof. Scott Donaldson (e.g., Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cheever), it provides a comprehensive account of EAR's life, as well as brief discussions of many of his best poems, composed between the 1890s and his death in 1935.Donaldson has the advantage of Robinson letters not available to earlier writers; other resources include critical works into this century and his own literary background.The book may provoke further discussion on the topic of love and may present more personal detail than many readers want or need, yet it also allows for a deeper sense of both the man and the poet. It can fill gaps and/or be a refresher for scholars and teachers.Students might peruse the volume for understanding and perhaps the inspiration to read Robinson further.The extensive bibliography is valuable.I recommend this biography and suggest it as a catalyst (along with Donald Hall's and other recent critical works) for restoring E. A. Robinson to his place as one of America's greatest men of letters.

Winifred H. Sullivan, Ph.D.



195 words

Finally overlooked Robinson come to life
Who'd guess a biography of a shy poet from Maine would be such a page-turner? But the story of Robinson kept me riveted. A mother who didn't bother to name him right away since she wanted a girl, a father who considered him a loser, one brother addicted to morphine, another (the father's favorite) who's a raging alcoholic and incidentally stole the first girl Robinson loved. As a poet, he initially suffered financially and commercially for his beliefs as he was the first to write about common people, the gritty and the ordinary, something I never knew. His best-known poem, "Richard Cory," is no longer my only favorite since I've read Dear Friends, House on the Hill and Sheaves. The book's author, Scott Donaldson, apparently had the fortune of using previously unavailable sources, and he really makes Robinson come to life as person and a poet.

First Crack
I've been reading three big jumbo biographies of literary figures all at the same time, this one and the new lives of William Empson and Kingsley Amis (the Amis one comes out in April), and this book, A POET'S LIFE, is the one I figured ahead of time I'd like the least. I went into it scoffing, but came out, if not a convert to Arlington Robinson, a convert to Scott Donaldson, who took a chance with this enigmatic figure and at least squeezed the scrotum of the sphinx hard enough to make him give up a few of his secrets.

Robinson's youth was joyful, his family close, but a series of interrelated family tragedies scarred his adolescence and delivered him into manhood an emotional wreck on many levels. Donaldson provides a table of these tragedies, that's the only possible way to keep them straight, but it's the cumulative effect that matters: when Mary died, the mother of the three boys, her diphtheria kept away every townsperson. "No one would come near Mary Robinson's body or set foot inside the house where she had died." The boys had to prepare her for burial themselves. Even the preacher kept a handkerchief over his face, and avoided facing the grave as he spoke. "It was snowing. There were no other mourners in attendance. During the funeral, one kind neighbor took the risk of hanging a bag of doughnuts on the front doorknob of the Robinson house." Shortly afterwards, Edwin lost his two beloved brothers to addictions, and he himself became a poet--as Donaldson theorizes, an addiction like any other. Gardiner, Maine, was on the verge of a drastic reduction in status, as a city, as a trading center, as a place on the map. Its mills and factories shortly to close. Robinson looked back a thousand times in his poetry, but in life he only rarely returned to the place of his shame, even though his closest relations still clung to their bourgeois gentility.

For himself, the life of a poet entailed living in Boston and New York, and the artists' colony of McDowell, where he became the elder statesman. On his emotional life Donaldson is especially interesting. Robinson never married, and it is sometimes thought that he cherished a lifelong crush on the girl his doctor brother, Herman, married: Emma. I'm not so convinced, but Donaldson makes a good story out of it, pointing out that Robinson's numerous booklength poems frequently tell the same story, a woman who should have married a sensitive man, winding up with his prosperous counterpart, sometimes a brother.

Success came late. He compared his poetry to "rat poison to editors." For eleven years in a row no US magazine paid a penny for any of his contributions. He came of age in the same era as a few other now forgotten poets, (William Vaughan Moody and Ridgely Torrance for example); of them all today only Robert Frost is as read as Robinson. (Indeed many place him in a much higher rank.) In A POET'S LIFE, Frost comes across as a selfish, conniving d--k, but that's no surprise, is it? However, Robinson's aborted Harvard career did eventually plow the way for his surprise success--never count out a Harvard man--and Theodore Roosevelt, of all people, made him a star of the first magnitude (for EAR was the tutor of Teddy's son, Kermit, at Harvard, and Kermit felt sorry for him.) TR's review of Robinson's second volume, THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, remains, Donaldson notes, the only piece of literary criticism ever published by a sitting US president. Can you imagine our president today turning his hand to such a task? Roosevelt found him a sinecured job with the US government, even though he had sworn to forego this corrupt practice, which had been the pleasure of every previous US head of state, finding jobs for one's cronies. Robinson was Roosevelt's poet guy, a badge of class, even of modernism.

Robinson seems never to have gone out on a date with any woman, much less lost his virginity, and his friendships with other men were of such intensity that some have suspected, well, maybe he was having sex with them (or drawn that way at any rate). Any bit of evidence in this direction is immediately retracted by Donaldson. Mowry Saben, upon whose memoir Donaldson relies for a lot of this "evidence," isn't on second thought such a reliable witness, for he might have been bisexual himself. (We hear this a couple of times.) This gets my goat, for why does being bisexual mean that you're automatically untrustworthy? Perhaps the gay or bisexual would be more eager to ascribe their own condition to any prominent friend. I think it's the other way around, and Donaldson plays up the EAR-Emma "love affair" on evidence no less vague than Saben's, never adding the disclaimer, "However, Witness X was a known heterosexual and may be prejudiced in that direction." All I can say is, that Robinson seems to have left little old Maine for good reason, and he invariably turned up in homosexual hotbeds of the period, Manhattan's Greenwich Village and Chelsea, the back hills of Boston, and the McDowell Colony, where the boys are, EAR was there. And yet we get this sort of thing, again and again: "Only Mowry Saben among those who knew Robinson well, was moved to speculate that he had repressed homoerotic tendencies. And Saben, as we shall see, was an enthusiastic supporter of live and license in all their forms." (Page 261.) WTF, Scott Donaldson?

He was a tenant of Jimmie Moore's in NYC, the sybaritic gamesman who made his apartment building a Xanadu of fun and pleasure (even installing a bowling alley in the basement). Moore was the black sheep grandson of the divine Clement Clarke Moore, the one who gave us "Twas the Night Before Christmas." I think, if you've got the stamina to read this massive book, that you'll fall in love with the poet you meet in these generous and wise pages. And much of his poetry, which Donaldson quotes very aptly, rewards new attention, even a hundred years later. You get to know now only EAR, but the bohemians and Mandarins of a whole vanished culture--hundreds of them, from Amy Lowell and Algernon Blackwood to such "outsider artists" as Franklin Schenck," the painter--a student of Eakins--whom Robinson called the "modern St. Francis," who lived on an island outside East Northport, Long Island, on a "handkerchief of land." The "doctors told him he needed iron," writes Donaldson, "so he was boiling out an old horseshoe in a pot on his one-burner stove. He lacked the money to buy canvas, so he had painted birds and flowers and running streams on every window shade in his shack."
... Read more

Book Description
The object of this book is to give English readers the material necessary for a full understanding of one of the greatest and most interesting Italian mystical poets: Jacopone da Todi, the typical singer of the Franciscan movement, the first writer of philosophic religious poetry, and perhaps the most picturesque figure in the history of early Italian literature. ... Read more

Book Description
'The tide spreads a mantle of silk Around the Great Blasket Island' So wrote Micheal O'Guiheen of his beloved island home.But by 1953 the authorities had evacuated the Great Blasket and its traditions were vanishing.Micheal O'Guiheen, 'the Poet' of the book, was the son of Peig Sayers, who wrote 'An Old Woman's Reflections'.But while that was a celebration of the good times, and her son's schoolmate Maurice O'Sullivan's 'Twenty Years A-Growing' was a book of laughing youth, this takes the story to sombre middle age.It tells of sunny times clouded over only by unconscious intimations of mortality, not only of youth but also of an irreplaceable culture: the consternation caused by a passing comet, the drudgery of a turf-gathering expedition turning into a carefree rabbit hunt.This first and only English edition of O'Guiheen's 'cri de coeur' is supplemented by translations, from the author's own poetry, previously only available in the original. The Blasket Islands are three miles off Ireland's Dingle Peninsular. Until their evacuation just after the Second World War, the lives of the 150 or so Blasket Islanders had remained unchanged for centuries.A rich oral tradition of story-telling, poetry, and folktales kept alive the legends and history of the islands, and has made tier literature famous throughout the world.The seven Blasket Island books published by OUP contain memoirs and reminiscences from within this literary tradition, evoking a way of life which has now vanished. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pity Youth Does Not Last
It has been years since I read this book, yet it keeps coming to mind.The author's use of language is exquisite and touching.It is a tale of life in a time and place that can never be replicated.I have never seen the Blasket Islands, nor known anyone from there, yet I feel that I have been there and experienced it as fully as if I lived there in the islands' zenith, which, like the youth referred to in the title, surely could not last in the modern world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Title Says It All
This biography on Maya Angelou shows how various trials and accomplishments have shaped her life.What has it shaped her into?More than a poet.Maya is more than a poet and yet human, down to earth.Maya has a very diverse background and diverse accomplishments that many students would be able to relate to.The obstacles she has faced include prejudice, sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, and failed marriages.She is an accomplished writer, poet, playwright, activist, and performer.More Than a Poet moves chronologically throughout her life, showing important events that have made her an influential figure in today's society.

We would recommend this book because of its in-depth and realistic perspective on Angelou's life.We feel that the true-to-life depiction of Angelou's life and accomplishments would bring readers young and old to connect with Angelou as a human being.We would use the book in the sixth grade classroom as it has some mature content (well-handled) and its use of language would be well suited to the sixth grade reader.Perhaps the most effective use of this book would be in a biographical unit, including the study of victories in the face of hardships.

More than a poet
My review of this book is it was a good book and it showed me how one afican american woman in the united state can do so much with her life and. I will like to see more that she show words that will make you fell themand think about what she is saying this book showed me alot of things andshow me what I can do things in life even though the bad times and the goodtimes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A rare sincerity to give it the stature of a model
Some people attain a height by sheer merit. But that even love's labour can help one claim a position of true significance has amply been demonstrated by what happened to this book! Seely's book is now known to almost all Jibanananda admirers a large number of whom are, to tell you the truth, not very enthusiastic about English texts. The book can act like a model as to how one should start a literary acquaintance from the scratches. It has succeeded in presenting an able perspective to Jibanananda's work in terms of ageographic, ecological, political, mythological background. The use of the folk lores, seasonal motiffs, motiffs to transcend the cultural unfamiliarities have been remarkably identified and presented. In my opinion, the translations (for most of the oft-heard poems of the poet) are quite of satisfactory standard. Bengalis lamented among themselves the relative obscurity their achievements have often been destined to and this book gave them some satisfaction and slight expectation that Jibabanananda will be appreciated by international readers if not as much as he deserved to be. The hard work that has gone into its writing and the heart-work that it has possibly achieved will reward Seely with a name not unknown to the readers of Bengali poetry. It is pity that a person of his reputation has to oblige funding authorities for the chair at Chicago University, at present being graced by him.

Jibanananda Das - The Poet of the Invisible
"A Poet Apart" is a scholarly written book by Clinton B. Seely on Jibanananda Das, the most influential poet of Bengal after Rabindranath Tagore. Poet Jibanananda, in the book by Prof. Seely, is manifested uniquely in an historical time. Prof. Seely has rightly brought forth geography, politics, myth, metaphysics, literature etc. of Bengal, in the historical sense, as the basis for the formation of the essential matrix in which the poetry of Jibanananda formed, evolved, and completed itstransmutation from the visible to the invisible. Prof. Seely has done a superb literary work in bringing the life and poetry of Jibanananda Das to the English speaking readers, writers, and scholars.

Pre BJP Literary Hindu Nationalism
ThereviewerfromDallas,Texas, likes thisworkbyClintonSeelybecausehesees hisBengali-Hindu-Self-imagereflectedback at himby his Anglo American Master at theUniversityofChicago. Such Bengali-Hindu literarytasteonlyremindsthepeopleofBabington Macaulay'sIntellectual-Poison-Treecarried along by theBengaliHindusall the way fromCalcutta, IndiatoDallas,Texas. TosuchBengali Hindusobsessedby CulturalNationalism,IrecommendDavidLudden's Masterpiece : "MakingIndiaHindu".

An amazing mix of scholarship, insight, and creativity
"A Poet Apart" by Professor Seely is an amazing work where research scholarship, intelligence, multicultural insights gained only from experience, and poetic creativity have wonderfully blended in.

ProfessorSeely has lived in Bangladesh (particularly in Barisal, where Jibananandawas born and raised), deeply entrenched himself in a mix of the localpeople, their language, culture, natural surroundings (important tounderstand the Dhansiri, Hijal, Kirtankhola references), ethnicity, andsocio-political tradition, studied the poet's work thoroughly, and produceda phenomenal work on the poet in this book.

The translations ofJibanananda's uniquely Bengali coinages are simply astounding. I literallyfelt the same milieu and complexities of the poet through thetranslations.

But a translation of Jibanananda's work is not the onlygift you receive from this book - it is the hermeneutic effort that goesinto 'fusion of cultural horizons", beyond objectivity and relativity,that astounds the reader.

Early on in the book, Seely goes into a chapterof Bengal's history, geography, people, and cultural archetype which is socarefully, respectfully, and accurately knit that it instantly establishescredibility.

The rest is for the reader to read and enjoy.

I insistthat you read this book.

Neo-OccidentalOrientalism.
SimplyWorthless.Itonlyremindsthe readeroftheillegitimateAnglo-AmericanHinduloveaffair whoseillegitimateliteraryoff-springisthe inquuiryofanOccidentalintheBengali Hindu's KamaSutra,asseenfromtheauthor'spointofdepartureand deliberation onJibanandaDas. ... Read more