American Melancholy
American Melancholy
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Overview
Joyce Carol Oates documents our precious lives with an exacting eye to detail. She uses the tools of poetry like a master builder. From the biography of a poem, “To Marlon Brando in Hell,” to a plaintive and loving tribute to her late husband, “Palliative,” Oates writes poetry as expertly as she does fiction. In addition, she tips her hat to William Carlos Williams, Christopher Smart and Billy Collins. To read American Melancholy is to get a history, literature and civic lesson all within 128 pages. This is a solid book of poetry to be held in high esteem.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of our most insightful observers of the human heart and mind, and, with her acute social consciousness, one of the most insistent and inspired witnesses of a shared American history.
Oates is perhaps best known for her prodigious output of novels and short stories, many of which have become contemporary classics. However, Oates has also always been a faithful writer of poetry. American Melancholy showcases some of her finest work of the last few decades.
Covering subjects big and small, and written in an immediate and engaging style, this collection touches on both the personal and political. Loss, love, and memory are investigated, along with the upheavals of our modern age, the reality of our current predicaments, and the ravages of poverty, racism, and social unrest. Oates skillfully writes characters ranging from a former doctor at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army hospital to Little Albert, a six-month-old infant who took part in a famous study that revealed evidence of classical conditioning in human beings.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781799948636 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
Publication date: | 02/09/2021 |
Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Cheryl K. Smith has raised a small herd of dairy goats under the herd name Mystic Acres since 1998. She published Ruminations: The Nigerian Dwarf and Mini Dairy Goat magazine and Goat Health Care. She writes a blog (ruminationsongoats.blogspot.com) and is an expert on goats at allexperts.com.
Hometown:
Princeton, New JerseyDate of Birth:
June 16, 1938Place of Birth:
Lockport, New YorkEducation:
B.A., Syracuse University, 1960; M.A., University of Wisconsin, 1961Table of Contents
I The Coming Storm
In Hemp-Woven Hammocks Reading the Nation 3
Exsanguination 4
Little Albert, 1920 5
Harlow's Monkeys 10
Obedience: 1962 15
Loney 19
The Coming Storm 22
Edward Hopper's "Eleven A.M.," 1926 24
II The First Room
The First Room 33
Sinkholes 34
That Other 35
The Mercy 36
The Blessing 37
This Is not a Poem 38
Apocalypso 40
III American Melancholy
To Marlon Brando in Hell 45
Too Young to Marry But Not Too Young to Die 52
Doctor Help Me 57
Old America Has Come Home to Die 62
Jubilate: An Homage in Catterel Verse 67
Kite Poem 76
American Sign Language 77
Hometown Waiting For You 79
IV "This is the Time …"
Hatefugue 85
A Dream of Stopped-Up Drains 87
Bloodline, Elegy 92
Harvesting Skin 96
This is the Time for Which We Have Been Waiting" 100
The Tunnel 103
Palliative 107
Acknowledgments 111