Maureen N. McLane
A thrillingly original exploration of a life lived under poetryâ€™s uniquely seductive spell.,â€œOh! There are spirits of the air!â€ wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this stunningly original book Maureen N. McLane channels the spirits and voices that make up the music in one poetâ€™s mind.Â Weaving criticism and memoir, ,My Poets, explores a life reading and a life read. McLane invokes in ,My Poets ,not necessarily the best poets, nor the most important poets (whoever these might be), but those writers who, in possessing her, made her.Â â€œI am marking here what most marked me,â€ she writes.Â  Ranging from Chaucer to H. D. to William Carlos Williams to Louise GlÃ¼ck to Shelley (among others), McLane tracks the â€œgrowth of a poetâ€™s mind,â€ as Wordsworth put it in ,The Prelude,.Â In a poetical prose both probing and incantatory, McLane has written a radical book of experimental criticism. Susan Sontag called for an â€œerotics of interpretationâ€: this is it. Part ,Bildung,, part dithyramb, part exegesis, ,My Poets ,extends an implicit invitation to you, dear reader, to consider who your â€œmy poets,â€ or â€œmy novelists,â€ or â€œmy filmmakers,â€ or â€œmy pop stars,â€ might be.
Poetry,Nonfiction,Writing,Essays,Autobiography,Memoir,Criticism,Literary Criticism,Writing,Books About Books,Criticism,Biography,Language,Writing,Philosophy,Theory
My Poets