{"product_id":"orpheus-in-the-bronx-reginald-shepherd-9780472069989","title":"Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Orpheus in the Bronx\u003c\/i\u003e not only extols the freedom language affords us; it embodies that freedom, enacting poetry's greatest gift---the power to recognize ourselves as something other than what we are. These bracing arguments were written by a poet who sings.\"\u003cbr\u003e---James Longenbach\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA highly acute writer, scholar, editor, and critic, Reginald Shepherd brings to his work the sensibilities of a classicist and a contemporary theorist, an inheritor of the American high modernist canon, and a poet drawing and playing on popular culture, while simultaneously venturing into formal experimentation. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the essays collected here, Shepherd offers probing meditations unified by a \"resolute defense of poetry's autonomy, and a celebration of the liberatory and utopian possibilities such autonomy offers.\" Among the pieces included are an eloquent autobiographical essay setting out in the frankest terms the vicissitudes of a Bronx ghetto childhood; the escape offered by books and \"gifted\" status preserved by maternal determination; early loss and the equivalent of exile; and the formation of the writer's vocation. With the same frankness that he brings to autobiography, Shepherd also sets out his reasons for rejecting \"identity politics\" in poetry as an unnecessary trammeling of literary imagination. His study of the \"urban pastoral,\" from Baudelaire through Eliot, Crane, and Gwendolyn Brooks, to Shepherd's own work, provides a fresh view of the place of urban landscape in American poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout his essays---as in his poetry---Shepherd juxtaposes unabashed lyricism, historical awareness, and in-your-face contemporaneity, bristling with intelligence.\u003c\/p\u003eA volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Reginald Shepherd\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0472069985\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780472069989\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Michigan Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/01\/2008\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 208\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.55lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.00h x 5.54w x 0.57d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMulticultural Review\u003c\/i\u003e 09\/01\/2008 pg. 56","brand":"Reginald Shepherd","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43946676093183,"sku":"9780472069989","price":21.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_0d38e318-455c-4ecb-bd3a-7395e7690abf.jpg?v=1681514499","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/orpheus-in-the-bronx-reginald-shepherd-9780472069989","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}