New Books in Poetry

When it comes to writers and artists, biography plays a provocative role–yielding insight into both artistic influences and origins. This is especially true with the modernists, in particular T.S. Eliot. After graduating from Harvard University in 1910, the young Eliot spent a year in Paris, a year that had a lasting and profound effect upon his work that has gone largely unexamined until now. In her riveting intellectual biography, T.S. Eliot’s Parisian Year, Nancy Duvall Hargrove, the William L. Giles Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Mississippi State University, revisits that single year in the poet’s life to mine it for later influences. While this period is often interpreted to be typical of the early 20th century post-graduate foreign study experience, Hargrove invites us view it as extra-ordinary. Linking Eliot’s work to the Ballets Russes, the music of Stravinsky and the intellectual tension ofLaNouvelle Revue Francaise, she demonstrates the rare coming together of an artist and the art of his time to form “un present parfait.” It was a year that influenced not only his poetry but also his prose. As Hargrove writes, the theater Eliot encountered while in Paris “may have been the inspiration for the difficult dramatic goal which Eliot later set for himself: to write verse drama in an age conditioned to prose and to write of spiritual and moral concerns in an age largely devoid of and unsympathetic to them.” But perhaps most impressive- especially to any lover of Paris- is Hargrove’s meticulous recreation of the city as it was then. Through chapters on sport, popular entertainment, transportation, etc., she elegantly situates the young poet amid a city so alive it seems to strain against the page. The end result is a book that leaves the reader longing for both the poetry and Paris. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

There is no better description of poet Makalani Bandele‘s debut book Hellfightin’ (Willow Books, 2012) than the one found on his comprehensive website: “Derived from the nickname the French Army gave the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment in World War I, the Hellfighters . . . is a tour de force of lyricism, mysticism, jive philosophy, and discursive narrative as blues lick. The title of the book, Hellfightin‘, as a term is best understood in the context of the critical framework of the Blues …” Bandele’s Hellfightin‘, then, is a poetic education in the African American musical, cultural and historical traditions, and one of the latest installments from the famous creative ensemble known as the Affrilachian Poets. Bandele couldn’t be among better company than those poets who seek to bring attention to the black literary tradition within the Appalachian territories. Hellfightin‘ does all that and more. Listen to how Bandele tells us how. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

[Re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] When Helen Vendler was only 13, the future poetry critic and Harvard professor memorized several of Emily Dickinson’s more famous poems. They’ve stayed with her over the years, and today, she talks with us about one poem in particular that’s haunted her all this time.  It’s called “I cannot live with You.” According to Vendler, whose authoritative Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (Harvard University Press, 2011) has recently been published, it’s a heartbreaking poem of an unresolvable dilemma, and ensuing despair. This interview is the first in a new ThoughtCast series which examines a specific piece of writing — be it a poem, play, novel, short story, work of non-fiction or scrap of papyrus — that’s had a significant influence on the interviewee, that’s shaped and moved them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

UPDATE: Nikky Finney’s Head Off and Split has been named a finalist for a National Book Award. Congratulations, Nikky, from the folks at New Books in African American Studies and the New Books Network!) Poet Nikky Finney’s new book Head Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011) has made an immediate splash, receiving well-deserved critical acclaim from the literary world and wide attention from the reading public. Although her book has only been out a few months, it has already been widely reviewed, with Finney featured on the cover of the prestigious literary journal Poets and Writers. Finney is among the who’s who of writers, a poet about whom Nikki Giovanni says, “We all, especially now, need.” And yet Finney is unpretentious, caring, and inspirational. All this is illustrated in her interview for New Books in African American Studies, where she discusses the autobiographical impulse behind the book’s title, pays homage to black womanhood, worries about black boys, and she speaks on her love of love, of life, of words, of laughter. Finney is deep. And while that description might seem trite, think metaphorically, think still waters. There is much to mine in both Head Off and Split and in this interview. Finney has a generous spirit, giving much of herself to the world. But don’t be fooled. She doesn’t give all away. She reserves a little for herself, hones her spirit, cultivates it, as any good writer would. Then she lays some aesthetics on it, on what she has kept for herself, and blesses us, the world, when we’re ready. That’s what she has done in her latest volume. Enjoy it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry