About this item
A luminous collection of essays from one of our most original and influential poetsFive decades after her debut poetry collection, Firstborn, Louise Glck is a towering figure in American letters. Written with the same probing, analytic control that has long distinguished her poetry, American Originality is Glck's second book of essays -- her first, Proofs and Theories, won the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. Glck's moving and disabusing lyricism is on full display in this decisive new collection. From its opening pages, American Originality forces readers to consider contemporary poetry and its demigods in radical, unconsoling, and ultimately very productive ways. Determined to wrest ample, often contradictory meaning from our current literary discourse, Glck comprehends and destabilizes notions of "narcissism" and "genius" that are unique to the American literary climate. This includes erudite analyses of the poets who have interested her throughout her own career, such as Rilke, Pinsky, Chiasson, and Dobyns, and introductions to the first books of poets like Dana Levin, Peter Streckfus, Spencer Reece, and Richard Siken. Forceful, revealing, challenging, and instructive, American Originality is a seminal critical achievement.
About the Author
Louise Elisabeth Glück (born April 22, 1943) is an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000.
