Home › Books › Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose
Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose
by
66/99
Critics' Rating Index
76/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
34/99
Volume of Reviews
14/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
The first-ever collection of essays by one of our most distinguished and distinctive poets, Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Kay Ryan Synthesizing Gravity gathers for the first time a thirty-year selection of Kay Ryan's probings into aesthetics, poetics, and the mind in pursuit of art. A bracing collection of critical prose, book reviews, and her private previously unpublished soundings of poems and poets-- including Robert Frost, Stevie Smith, Marianne Moore, William Bronk, and Emily Dickinson-- Synthesizing Gravity bristles with Ryan's crisp wit, her keen off-kilter insights, and her appetite and appreciation for the genuine. Among essays like "Radiantly Indefensible," "Notes on the Danger of Notebooks," and "The Abrasion of Loneliness," are piquant pieces on the virtues of emptiness, forgetfulness, and other under-loved concepts. Edited and with an introduction by Christian Wiman, this generous collection of Ryan's distinctive thinking gives us a surprising look into the mind of an American master.
Reviews
"For anyone who's ever attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference, Ryan's gimlet-eyed account of the 2005 event in Vancouver will be a revelation ..."
"Each entry is an exploration into poetry, whether Ryan is revealing her own idiosyncrasies as a writer or considering the lives of poets, such as the eccentric Stevie Smith ..."
"Synthesizing Gravity, however, is a poet's book about poetry, and a fairly circumscribed one at that."
"Ryan's love of poetry is palpable and intense, but she approaches writing about it as if it were, well, a bit of a joke ..."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!