For a Limited Time Only (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Wallace, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822959968 ISBN 13: 9780822959960

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008

Synopsis

For a Limited TIme Only, Ronald Wallace's eighth collection of poems, is perhaps his darkest and most meditative to date, focusing his experiences with illness, old age, and mortality; his father-in-law's death after a long bout with Alzheimer's; his step-father's death after a painful struggle with esophageal cancer, his own bout with prostate cancer. These personal experiences form the core of the first three sections of the book, but are mediated by theological and philosophical speculations that find further voice in the character of a \u201cMr. Grim,\u201d whose angry, self-pitying, gruff, comic, self-depreciating, nostalgic, defeated, and hopeful riffs on the human condition provide a bridge to the affirmative, often comic, close. In the final two sections, in poems in praise of his dentist, his barber, his wife, his grandparents, the morpheme, Mr. Malaprop, Pluto, tattoos, hamburger heaven, sex talk, and poetry itself, Wallace once again proves the resilience of hope and humor in what is, for him, finally a world of wonders.

About this title

About the Author

Ronald Wallace is the author of seven previous books of poetry, including: Long for This World: New and Selected Poems; The Uses of Adversity; Time's Fancy; People and Dog in the Sun; and The Makings of Happiness. His works of literary criticism include: God Be with the Clown: Humor in American Poetry; The Last Laugh: Form and Affirmation in the Contemporary American Comic Novel; and Henry James and the Comic Form. Wallace is Halls-Bascom Professor of English, Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry, and codirector of the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822959968
• ISBN 13: 9780822959960
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104