Proofs and Theories (Lives & letters) - Softcover

Gluck, Louise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857543904 ISBN 13: 9781857543902

Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd, 1999

Synopsis

Winner of the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Non-Fiction, Proofs and Theories is an illuminating collection of essays by Louise Glück, whose most recent book of poems, The Wild Iris, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Glück brings to her prose the same precision of language, the same incisiveness and insight that distinguish her poetry. The force of her thought is evident everywhere in these essays, from her explorations of other poets' work to her skeptical contemplation of current literary critical notions such as "sincerety" and "courage." Here also are Glück's revealing reflections on her own education and life as a poet, and a tribute to her teacher and mentor, Stanley Kunitz. Proofs and Theories is the testament of a major poet.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Proofs & Theories is a long-awaited first gathering of essays by one of this country's most brilliant poets. Like her poems, the prose of Ms. Gluck, who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1993 for The Wild Iris, is compressed, fastidious, fierce, alert, and absolutely unconsoled. The force of her thought is apparent everywhere in her writing and whether she is contemplating - skeptically - the critical currency of ideas like "courage" and "sincerity", T. S. Eliot's reduced reputation as a poet of impersonality, the loyalties of the objectivist George Oppen, or the ferocity in the headlong art of Sylvia Plath, there is something exhilarating about her seriousness, spare, austere, mind-clearing, and adamantly alive. She shares her skepticism with a whole temper of post-modern critical thought. But post-modernism, on the whole, has stood aside from what artists have thought was at stake in their art in order to dissect it. Ms. Gluck is also quite expert - wry sometimes, darkly funny even - at dissection but in these essays one never doubts what is at stake: an art as truthful, adamant, and unflinching as the intelligence that she brings to her own. Proofs & Theories is not a casual collection. It is the testament of a major poet.

About the Author:

Louise Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for The Wild Iris in 1993. The author of eight books of poetry and one collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry, she has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. She was named the next U.S. poet laureate in August 2003. Her most recent book is The Seven Ages. Louise Glück teaches at Williams College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1857543904
• ISBN 13: 9781857543902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128