The Fire Fetched Down - Hardcover

Bradley, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679446206 ISBN 13: 9780679446200

Publisher: Knopf, 1996

Synopsis

As up-to-date as the current cosmography, as steeped in tradition as ancient agriculture, George Bradley's The Fire Fetched Down overflows with energy, humor, and intellectual curiosity. Readers will find the aesthetic detachment and technical proficiency they have come to expect of Bradley's work, but they will discover other, more immediate attractions as well. The poet sounds new notes in his new book, among them the bemused intimacy of "Ode to Absent-Mindedness" and the uneasy excursion of "Frug Macabre." From lyric outburst to contemplative essay, from myths of origin to postmodern manifestos, the work assembled here is of a heady variety in subject and style. Bradley does not lose his balance, though, and he manages to effect an equilibrium between inspection and introspection. By turns exuberant and wistful, informative and sly, The Fire Fetched Down is also serious fun. Bradley offers those most human of pleasures, the cultivation of language and the exercise of second thought. This is poetry intended to entertain in the largest sense of the word.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"George Bradley's The Fire Fetched Down earns its Promethean title, and helps persuade me that American poetry will go on maintaining itself as a high art even now and in worse days to come, when politicized bad verse (when it is even verse) is celebrated in the academies and in the media. Bradley, now fully individuated, has the cognitive power, the rhetorical gifts, the primal exuberance of language, and the spiritual vision, to develop into the Merrill or Ashbery of his own generation. Everything in The Fire Fetched Down will sustain, and reward, many readings."

-- Harold Bloom

About the Author:

George Bradley is the author of two previous books of verse: Terms to Be Met was selected by James Merrill for the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1985, and Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil followed in 1991. While appearing frequently in The Paris Review, Bradley has contributed to many other magazines, including The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Poetry. Among the awards he has received are the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Peter I. B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Chester, Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0679446206
• ISBN 13: 9780679446200
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 69