The Life of Poetry Poets on Their Art and Craft offers books by poets writingprose on their alluring and elusive genre. These books will help readers toundersta... » 

The Life of Poetry Poets on Their Art and Craft offers books by poets writingprose on their alluring and elusive genre. These books will help readers tounderstand the poems on the page as much as they help poets to understand themechanics of the process. These vital and engaging books articulate theliterary vision aesthetic beliefs and pleasure in poetry in a way onlypracticing poets can and contribute to the long and lively tradition of poetswriting on their art and craft.In his longawaited first book of prose poet and essayist Sherod Santos takesa compelling look into some of poetrys deepest secrets an investigation thatleads him to the surprising conclusion that poems have minds of their ownminds often inaccessible even to the one who composed them.In these essays Santos explores not only what he thinks about poetry but alsowhat and how poetry thinks about itself. His writings range across the historyof Western poetry from formative classical myths to modern experimental formsand touch on subjects as diverse as the rhetorical history of cannibalism thepolitical and cultural uses of translation and the current state of Americanpoetry. Along the way he calls on past poets like Ovid Baudelaire andPhyllis Wheatley on twentiethcentury poets like Wallace Stevens H. D. andRainer Maria Rilke and on writers and thinkers like Montaigne WalterBenjamin Simone Weil and Paul de Man.These essays explore facets of poetry known best to one who has practiced theart for years. From the methods of poetic attention to the processes by whichperception is transformed into language and from the illusive relationshipbetween poetry and meaning to theintegral relationship between poetry andmemory this collection delves into what it means to be a poet and how being apoet is intimately tied to ones social and cultural moment.With Santoss trademark flair for seeking out the overlooked and unforeseeableA Poetry of Tw «