Ars poetica : origin stories -- Sylvia Plath's surges -- Breakthroughs -- Mirror portraits -- Influences illuminated : Francine J. Harris -- A long career : W.S. Merwin -- Rehearsals and rehashings -- Louise Glück's steady growth -- Endings.
Summary:
"The staggering thing about a life's work is it takes a lifetime to complete," Craig Morgan Teicher writes in these luminous essays. We Begin in Gladness considers how poets start out, how they learn to hear themselves, and how some offer us that rare, glittering thing: lasting work. Teicher traces the poetic development of the works of Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, Louise Glück, and Francine J. Harris, among others, to illuminate the paths they forged by dramatic breakthroughs or by slow increments, and always by perseverance. We Begin in Gladness is indispensable for readers curious about the artistic life and for writers wondering how they might light out or even scale the peak of the mountain."
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.