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The light of the world : a memoir
In THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid prose, Alexander presents us with the heartrending story of a soul mate found and lost. As she reflects on the beauty of her married life, the trauma resulting from her husband's death, and the solace found in caring for her two sons. Alexander universalizes a very personal quest for meaning in the wake of loss. The Light of the World is at once an endlessly compelling memoir and a deeply felt meditation on the blessings of love, family, art, and community. It is also a lyrical celebration of a life well-lived and a paean to the enduring gift of human companionship. For those who have loved and lost, or for anyone who cares about what matters most, The Light of the World is required reading.--Cover page [4].
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Phillis Wheatley
WithPoems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral(1773), Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784) became the first English-speaking person of African descent to publish a book and only the second woman-of any race or background- to do so in America. Written in Boston while she was just a teenager, and when she was still a slave, Wheatley's work was an international sensation. InPhillis Wheatley, Vincent Carretta offers the first full-length biography of a figure whose origins and later life have remained shadowy despite her iconic status.
A scholar with extensive knowledge of transatlantic literature and history, Carretta uncovers new details about Wheatley's origins, her upbringing, and how she gained freedom. Carretta solves the mystery of John Peters, correcting the record of when he and Wheatley married and revealing what became of him after her death. Assessing Wheatley's entire body of work, Carretta discusses the likely role she played in the production, marketing, and distribution of her writing. Wheatley developed a remarkable transatlantic network that transcended racial, class, political, religious, and geographical boundaries. Carretta reconstructs that network and sheds new light on her religious and political identities. In the course of his research he discovered the earliest poem attributable to Wheatley and has included it and other unpublished poems in the biography.
Carretta relocates Wheatley from the margins to the center of her eighteenth-century transatlantic world, revealing the fascinating life of a woman who rose from the indignity of enslavement to earn wide recognition, only to die in obscurity a few years later.
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I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive
When everything fell apart for Lynn Melnick, she went to
Dollywood. It was perhaps an unusual refuge. The theme park, partly
owned by and wholly named for Dolly Parton, celebrates a country
music legend who grew up in church and in poverty in rural
Tennessee. Yet Dollywood is exactly where Melnick-a poet, urbanite,
and daughter of a middle-class Jewish family-needed to be. Because
Melnick, like the musician she adores, is a survivor.
In this bracing memoir, Melnick explores Parton's dual
identities as feminist icon and objectified sex symbol-identities
that reflect the author's own fraught history with rape culture and
the grueling effort to reclaim her voice in the wake of loss and
trauma. Each chapter engages with the artistry and cultural impact
of one of Parton's songs, as Melnick reckons with violence,
creativity, parenting, abortion, sex work, love, and the
consolations and cruelties of religion. Guided by Parton's music,
Melnick walks the slow path to recovery in the company of those who
came before her and stand with her, as trauma is an experience both
unique and universal. Candid and discerning, I've Had to Think
Up a Way to Survive is at once a memoir and a love song-a
story about one life and about an artist who has brought life to
millions.
eBook
Not at all what one is used to : the life and times of Isabella Gardner
Born in 1915 to one of New England's elite wealthy families, the niece and namesake of the important art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (b. 1840-d. 1924), Isabella Gardner was expected to follow a certain path in life, one that would take her from marriageable debutante to proper society lady. But that plan was derailed when at age eighteen, Isabella caused a drunk driving accident. Her family, to shield her from disgrace, sent her to Europe for acting studies, not foreseeing how life abroad would fan the romantic longings and artistic impulses that would define the rest of Isabella's years. In this biography, the author tells the story of this passionate, troubled woman, whose career as a poet was in constant compromise with her wayward love life and her impulsive and reckless character. Life took Gardner from the theater world of the 1930s and '40s to the poetry scene of the '50s and '60s to the wild, bohemian art life of New York's Hotel Chelsea in the '70s. She often followed where romance, rather than career, led her. At nineteen, she had an affair with a future president of Ireland, then married and divorced three famous American husbands in succession. Turning from acting to poetry, Gardner became associate editor of Chicago's Poetry magazine and earned success with her best received collection, Birthdays from the Ocean, in 1955. Soon after, her life took a turn when she met the southern poet Allen Tate. He was married to Caroline Gordon but left her to wed Gardner, who moved to Minneapolis and gave up writing to please him, but after a few short years, Tate fell for a young nun and abandoned her. In the liveliest of places at the right times, Gardner associated with many of the most significant cultural figures of her age, including her cousin Robert Lowell, T.S. Eliot, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Virgil Thomson, Tennessee Williams, and Robert Penn Warren. But famous connections could never save Isabella from herself. Having abandoned her work, she suffered through alcoholism, endured more failed relationships, and watched the lives of her children unravel fatally. Toward the end of her life, though, she took her pen back up for the poems in her final volume. Redeemed by her writing, Gardner died alone in 1981, just after being named the first poet laureate of New York State. Through interviews with many Gardner intimates and extensive archival research, the author delves deep into the life of a woman whose poetry, according to one friend, \"probably saved her sanity.\" Much more than a biography, this the story of a woman whose tumultuous life was emblematic of the cultural unrest at the height of the twentieth century.
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Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus
This definitive biography gives a brilliant account of the life and art of Robert Duncan (1919–1988), one of America’s great postwar poets. Lisa Jarnot takes us from Duncan’s birth in Oakland, California, through his childhood in an eccentrically Theosophist household, to his life in San Francisco as an openly gay man who became an inspirational figure for the many poets and painters who gathered around him. Weaving together quotations from Duncan’s notebooks and interviews with those who knew him, Jarnot vividly describes his life on the West Coast and in New York City and his encounters with luminaries such as Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Paul Goodman, Michael McClure, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson.
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Just kids
A prelude to fame, Just Kids recounts the friendship of two young artists--Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe - whose passion fueled their lifelong pursuit of art. In 1967, a chance meeting between two young people led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would carry each to international success never dreamed of. The backdrop is Brooklyn, Chelsea Hotel, Max's Kansas City, Scribner's Bookstore, Coney Island, Warhol's Factory and the whole city resplendent. Among their friends, literary lights, musicians and artists such as Harry Smith, Bobby Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Daley, Sam Shepherd, William Burroughs, etc. It was a heightened time politically and culturally; the art and music worlds exploding and colliding. In the midst of all this two kids made a pact to always care for one another. Scrappy, romantic, committed to making art, they prodded and provided each other with faith and confidence during the hungry years--the days of cous-cous and lettuce soup. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. Beautifully written, this is a profound portrait of two young artists, often hungry, sated only by art and experience. And an unforgettable portrait of New York, her rich and poor, hustlers and hellions, those who made it and those whose memory lingers near.
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Nikki Grimes
Young readers are introduced to Nikki Grimes, who gave her first poetry reading at the age of thirteen. Discover how she became an award-winning author.
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The Life and Poetry of Ted Kooser
Like a flash of lightning it came to him-the unathletic high school student Ted Kooser saw a future as a famous poet that promised everything: glory, immortality, a bohemian lifestyle (no more doing dishes, no more cleaning his room), and, particularly important to the lonely teenager, girls! Unlike most kids with a sudden ambition, Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and thirteenth poet laureate of the United States, made good on his dream. But glory was a long time coming, and along the way Kooser lived the life that has made his poetry what it is, as deeply grounded in family, work, and the natural world as it is attuned to the nuances of language.
Just as so much of Kooser's own writing weaves geography, history, and family stories into its measures, so does this first critical biography consider the poet's work and life together: his upbringing in Iowa, his studies in Nebraska with poet Karl Shapiro as mentor, his career in insurance, his family life, his bout with cancer, and, always, his poetry. Combining a fine appreciation of Kooser's work and life, this book finally provides a fuller and more complex picture of a writer who, perhaps more than any other, has brought the Great Plains and the Midwest, lived large and small, into the poetry of our day.
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