That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration by Alan Shapiro

That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration by Alan Shapiro

More than a gathering of essays, That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration is part memoir, part literary criticism, and an artful fusion of the two. It is an intimate portrait of a life in poetry that only Alan Shapiro could have written. In this book, Shapiro brings his characteristic warmth, humor, and many years as both poet and teacher to bear on questions surrounding two preoccupations: the role of conventions of literary and social norms in how we fashion our identities on and off the page and how suffering both requires and resists self-expression. He sketches affectionate portraits of his early teachers, revisits the deaths of his brother and sister, and examines poems that have helped him navigate troubled times. Integrating storytelling and literary analysis so seamlessly that art and life become extensions of each other, Shapiro embodies in his lively prose the very qualities he celebrates in the poems he loves. Brimming with wit and insight, this is a book for poets, students and scholars of poetry, teachers of literature, and everyone who cares about the literary arts and how they illuminate our personal and public lives.

Alan Shapiro has published many books, including Reel to Reel, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A new collection of poetry, Life Pig, is also available this fall from the University of Chicago Press.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226416953
ISBN 10	022641695X
Title	That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration
Author	Alan Shapiro
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	2016-11-01
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.