Description
Book SynopsisOne of America's finest poet-critics leads readers into the mysteries of poetry: how it draws on our lives, and how it leads 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.
Trade ReviewNo American poet critic... has written such beautiful prose or wielded such manifold and supple terms of analysis. McClatchy analyzes poetry as only a poet could, with an insider's knowledge of the craft-and of the terror of the blank page. Los Angeles Times The full force of [McClatchy's] probing intelligence and emotional insight catches us up with infectious gusto... T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Allen Tate, Howard Nemerov, Louise Bogan, and Randall Jarrell all commaded adminration for their essays and their verse. McClatchy belongs in this select company, and his skills in one mode complement his gifts in the other. The New Leader In this time of literary 'scattering,'when many poets admire and practice techniques of fragmentation, McClatchy's voice resounds with urbanity, clarity, deadly wit. The power of this civil tongue is classical, expository, the voice of the integrated psyche. San Francisco Chronicle It's no surprise to find in Twenty Questions qualities that have always distinguished J.D. McClatchy's work: sparkling intelligence; learning; an informed immersion in the poetry of our time... In a noble tradition of the essay, he chooses to write about the writers who interest him, personally, not always part of the familiar academic canon... A generous, bracing collection. -- Robert Pinsky Charming, genial, but altogether accomplished. -- Kate Fullbrook Journal of American Studies
Table of ContentsReading 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
