A Difficult Grace: On Poets, Poetry, and Writing

by Ryan, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780820322315
• ISBN10: 0820322318
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

"[In] preliterate societies, even those as late as ancient Greece and Anglo-Saxon England, the poet is the ideologue, historian, theologian, philosopher, TV, newspaper, Internet, and megamultiplex cinema rolled into one"--so begins Michael Ryan's lively description of the cultural context of ancient poetry, in pointed contrast to that of poetry now. Informed by his own experience as a poet and writer,A Difficult Graceexamines the lives and works of Dickinson, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Williams, Whitman, Frost, Bishop, and Stevens (as well as other poets and writers before and since), deftly combining literary history, critical writing by the writers themselves, and Ryan's expert understanding of their work. The result is a collection of powerfully argued essays written in a style easily accessible to a wide range of readers. Attending to the difficult graces of form, structure, rhythm, and technique, Ryan illuminates the unifying subject of his book: the vocation of the poet and the writer in the contemporary world. This is an essential book for both writers and readers.

Author Biography

Michael Ryan is the author of three poetry collections, including In Winter and God Hunger, and of the memoir Secret Life. His work has been honored by the Lenore Marshall Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among many other awards. Ryan is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Poetry and the Audience	1	(34)
A Note on Form	35	(5)
The Literary Dictator	40	(10)
Mister Stevens	50	(7)
Disclosures of Poetry	57	(18)
A Dark Gray Flame	75	(15)
Flaubert in Florida	90	(17)
Between Scylla and Charybdis	107	(18)
Three Essays on Composition: A Phantasmagoria	119	(6)
Consider a Move	125	(2)
Influence and Mastery	127	(11)
Tell Me a Story	138	(10)
Authenticity and Authority	148	(11)
Vocation According to Dickinson	159	(20)
Acknowledgments	179	(2)
Index	181