The Complete Perfectionist: A Poetics of Work - Softcover

Jiménez, Juan Ramón

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983322007 ISBN 13: 9780983322009

Publisher: Swan Isle Press, 2012

Synopsis

Few have written more memorably about the work of poetry and the poetics of work than Juan Ramón Jiménez, winner of a Nobel Prize and discerning teacher of an entire generation of Spanish poets. In this series of aphorisms, Jiménez brings together the elements of perfect work, both in writing and in other realms. Among these elements—the wellsprings of any kind of creation—are instinct and inspiration, memory and forgetting, silence and noise, love and regret.

A treasure for poets and writers, The Complete Perfectionist includes helpful commentary by noted translator Christopher Maurer and shows perfection as a process of “becoming” rather than an end product. In these insightful pages, a poet haunted by perfection reveals his methods of writing and revision, and measures the social and ethical dimensions of el trabajo gustoso, or pleasurable work. This revised and expanded edition includes many aphorisms recently published in Spanish and not previously included.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"This is a gorgeous little book."
--Robert Bly

From the Inside Flap:

s an ideal that makes life worth living--the internal applause as you hit the perfect note, write the perfect piece, reach the goal you once thought unattainable.  Yet many of us abandon that pursuit and settle for less than what we secretly want: perfect work, perfect love, perfect selves.  

Few have courted perfection like Nobel Prize winner Juan Ram¾n JimÚnez, who felt both fear and exhilaration before his own high standards and negotiated shrewdly with his own personal best.  

Drawing upon Juan Ram¾n's aphorisms, Christopher Maurer meditates upon his struggle and gives us a guide to the pursuit of life's ultimate pleasure: the dream of doing perfect work.  Juan Ram¾n's relentless quest for the perfect poem leads here to an inspiring new vision of how to reach perfection in any endeavor.

Juan Ram¾n analyzes the most radical elements of perfection: how to create and revise, reconcile noise and sil

About this edition

• Publisher: Swan Isle Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0983322007
• ISBN 13: 9780983322009
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 161