That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226416953)

More than a gathering of essays, That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration is part memoir, part literary criticism, and an artful fusion of the two. It is an intimate portrait of a life in poetry that only Alan Shapiro could have written.

In this book, Shapiro brings his characteristic warmth, humor, and many years as both poet and teacher to bear on questions surrounding two preoccupations: the role of conventions--of literary and social norms--in how we fashion our identities on and off the page, and how suffering both requires and resists self-expression. He sketches affectionate portraits of his early teachers, revisits the deaths of his brother and sister, and examines poems that have helped him navigate troubled times. Integrating storytelling and literary analysis so seamlessly that art and life become extensions of each other, Shapiro embodies in his lively prose the very qualities he celebrates in the poems he loves.

Brimming with wit and insight, this is a book for poets, students and scholars of poetry, teachers of literature, and everyone who cares about the literary arts and how they illuminate our personal and public lives.


Author: Alan Shapiro
ISBN-10: 022641695X
ISBN-13: 9780226416953
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 11/01/2016
Pages: 192
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.70d