Last Looks, Last Books

Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill

By:

Helen Vendler

Format:

Hardback

Series:

Bollingen Series

Show Hide Adult Content

$88.99

Available from supplier

Usually ships in 3-4 weeks

0 in Trolley

Price Match

Wrap this item as a gift ($5.90) - add a free gift card on the next page

Buy Now, Pay Later with:

Afterpay is available on orders $100 to $2000 Learn more

Availability

Delivering to:

Estimated arrival:

Around 11-21 June using International Courier

Description

In Last Looks, Last Books, the eminent critic Helen Vendler examines the ways in which five great modern American poets, writing their final books, try to find a style that does justice to life and death alike. With traditional religious consolations no longer available to them, these poets must invent new ways to express the crisis of death, as well as the paradoxical coexistence of a declining body and an undiminished consciousness. In The Rock, Wallace Stevens writes simultaneous narratives of winter and spring; in Ariel, Sylvia Plath sustains melodrama in cool formality; and in Day by Day, Robert Lowell subtracts from plenitude. In Geography III, Elizabeth Bishop is both caught and freed, while James Merrill, in A Scattering of Salts, creates a series of self-portraits as he dies, representing himself by such things as a Christmas tree, human tissue on a laboratory slide, and the evening/morning star. The solution for one poet will not serve for another; each must invent a bridge from an old style to a new one. Casting a last look at life as they contemplate death, these modern writers enrich the resources of lyric poetry.

Author Biography:

Helen Vendler is the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University. Her many books include "Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery "(Princeton), as well as studies of Shakespeare, Keats, Yeats, Stevens, and Heaney. She is a frequent reviewer for the "New Republic", the "New York Review of Books", and other publications.

Release date Australia

March 21st, 2010

Author

Helen Vendler

Audiences

Professional & Vocational
Tertiary Education (US: College)

Pages

168

Series

Bollingen Series

Dimensions

140x216x20

ISBN-13

9780691145341

Product ID

4031494

Customer reviews

Nobody has reviewed this product yet. You could be the first!

Write a Review

Marketplace listings

There are no Marketplace listings available for this product currently.
Already own it? Create a free listing and pay just 9% commission when it sells!

Sell Yours Here