A Study Guide for Galway Kinnell's "Another Night in the Ruins," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
Hailed as one of the most powerful and moving poets of his generation, Galway Kinnell has been commended by critics who often pair his name with such famous predecessors as Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, W. B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Theodore Roethke. Born on February 1, 1927, Galway Kinnell has been working on the strength and truthfulness of his voice for almost five decades now. This well-written work offers a very important perspective on a major living poet, focusing specifically on what is a key theme in Kinnell's work--death. The author's thematic analysis does not stop short with a direct reading of the poetry, it also seeks to place her subject within several contexts, including that problematic pivotal position between Modernism and Postmodernism, and a specific poetic tradition (including T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Whitman and Dickinson). What emerges from the readings of Kinnell's various poetry collections is essentially an extended philosophical meditation on death, that both offers itself as a commentary whilst also repeatedly showing, with much clarity, how complex a subject death is for Kinnell. This meditation on death also means a deep consideration of those other large themes that have asserted themselves in American poetry--transcendentalism, nature, and life itself magnified against the darkness of death in the poet's work. This volume will make an important contribution to research on Kinnell and the author's ability to follow her subject into a very complex labyrinth of philosophical and aesthetic discussions, while always being mindful that Kinnell remains central, offers much in the way of a good example of literary analysis and scholarship. This book makes a significant contribution to scholarship on Galway Kinnell, a major contemporary poet whose work will receive more and more attention over the coming years. In addition, this work also marks a contribution to scholarship on poetry, American literature and contemporary literature, as well as to the fascination with death as a theme in much of American literature, from Dickinson and Poe to Plath and Salinger. Death in the Works of Galway Kinnell will be a very valuable resource for students and teachers of contemporary poetry and American literature.
Vols. I-II: 325 British, American and Canadian poets and novelists from Beowulf to the present.--Vol. III: 139 world dramatists from the Greeks to the present.--Vol. IV: 1990 Update.--Vols. V-VI: 127 Contemporary writers.
This collection started as a whisper, a quiet mouth asking questions. Over the years it became a coherent voice that kept getting louder. Now it is a song, sprung from a yearning to fill in the missing parts, to understand my mother's story. Perhaps it's something that goes beyond what is experiential and real and moves into memory and imagination. Perhaps it is a book of magic, of synchronicity and colliding moments in time, too strange to be logical, too concise to be chance. Ultimately, it's a way of shedding light, in order to change the direction of a past. Sometimes, I think it has been formed by my imagined daughter, clearing the way ahead before her own birth. Or by whole generations of women, celebrating a future, formed from the heart of us.
Winner of the National Book Award in 1991 “This collection amounts to a hymn of praise for all the workers of America. These proletarian heroes, with names like Lonnie, Loo, Sweet Pea, and Packy, work the furnaces, forges, slag heaps, assembly lines, and loading docks at places with unglamorous names like Brass Craft or Feinberg and Breslin’s First-Rate Plumbing and Plating. Only Studs Terkel’s Working approaches the pathos and beauty of this book. But Levine’s characters are also significant for their inner lives, not merely their jobs. They are unusually artistic, living ‘at the borders of dreams.’ One reads The Tempest ‘slowly to himself’; another ponders a diagonal chalk line drawn by his teacher to suggest a triangle, the roof of a barn, or the mysterious separation of ‘the dark from the dark.’ What Work Is ranks as a major work by a major poet . . . very accessible and utterly American in tone and language.” —Daniel L. Guillory, Library Journal
Bringing writers to readers brings readers to writing. Today’s students do read—we know that they read a significant amount of email, text messages, web pages, and even magazines. What many do not do is read in a sustained way. Many do not come to college prepared to read long texts, nor do they come with the tools necessary to analyze and synthesize what they read. Nick Delbanco and Alan Cheuse have proven in their own teaching that when you improve students’ ability and interest in reading, you will help them improve their writing. A new part 1 in this edition frontloads information for students on both the writing process and the critical use of sources. Bringing writers to students, brings students to writing. Literature: Craft and Voice is an innovative Introductory Literature program designed to engage students in the reading of Literature, all with a view to developing their reading, analytical, and written skills. Accompanied by, and integrated with, video interviews of dozens of living authors who are featured in the text, conducted by authors Nick Delbanco and Alan Cheuse specifically for use with their textbook, the book provides a living voice for the literature on the page and creates a link between the student and the authors of great works of literature. The first text of its kind, Literature: Craft and Voice offers a more enjoyable and effective reading experience through its fresh, inviting design and accompanying rich video program. Digital support is provided through CONNECT Literature which will be totally integrated with the Blackboard CMS.
Winner of the 2019 National Book Award “The sight lines in Sze’s 10th collection are just that―imagistic lines strung together by jump-cuts, creating a filmic collage that itself seems to be a portrait of simultaneity.” ―The New York Times From the current phenomenon of drawing calligraphy with water in public parks in China to Thomas Jefferson laying out dinosaur bones on the White House floor, from the last sighting of the axolotl to a man who stops building plutonium triggers, Sight Lines moves through space and time and brings the disparate and divergent into stunning and meaningful focus. In this new work, Arthur Sze employs a wide range of voices—from lichen on a ceiling to a man behind on his rent—and his mythic imagination continually evokes how humans are endangering the planet; yet, balancing rigor with passion, he seizes the significant and luminous and transforms these moments into riveting and enduring poetry. “These new poems are stronger yet and by confronting time head on, may best stand its tests.” ―Lit Hub “The wonders and realities of the world as seen through travel, nature walks, and daily routine bring life to the poems in Sight Lines.” ―Library Journal
