That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration
More than a gathering of essays, "That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration" is part memoir, part literary criticism, and an artful fusion of the two. It is an intimate portrait of a life in poetry that only Alan Shapiro could have written. In this book, Shapiro brings his characteristic warmth, humor, and many years as both poet and teacher to bear on questions surrounding two preoccupations: the role of conventions – of literary and social norms – in how we fashion our identities on and off the page, and how suffering both requires and resists self-expression. He sketches affectionate portraits of his early teachers, revisits the deaths of his brother and sister, and examines poems that have helped him navigate troubled times. Integrating storytelling and literary analysis so seamlessly that art and life become extensions of each other, Shapiro embodies in his lively prose the very qualities he celebrates in the poems he loves. Brimming with wit and insight, this is a book for poets, students and scholars of poetry, teachers of literature, and everyone who cares about the literary arts and how they illuminate our personal and public lives.
About the Author
Alan Shapiro has published many books, including "Reel to Reel", a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A new collection of essays, "That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration", is also available this fall from the University of Chicago Press.
Reviews
"Philip Larkin said, 'Writing poems should be a pleasure. So should reading them, by God!' As should essays about poetry, which almost never are. But Alan Shapiro's are. Smart, funny, earnest, erudite, dexterous, and down to earth, they both teach and delight in connecting the highest arts of poetry to the basics of lived life" – Michael Ryan, author of "This Morning"
