| American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse: (American Poets Project #7) Contributor(s): Hollander, John (Editor) |
|
 |
ISBN: 1931082499 ISBN-13: 9781931082495 Publisher: Library of America OUR PRICE: $17.00 Product Type: Hardcover Published: October 2003 * Not available - Not in print at this time *Annotation: Distinguished poet and critic John Hollander offers, for the first time ever, a buoyant guided tour of American light verse-a tradition he delightfully pursues from Ambrose Bierce's sardonic "The Devil's Dictionary" quatrains to the latter-day comic inventions of Edward Gorey, Kenneth Koch, and James Merrill. Along the way, "American Wits" gathers a rich harvest of couplets, clerihews, epigrams, parodies, burlesques, and other forms of fractured verse. The varied and often surprising list of contributors includes Edwin Arlington Robinson, Don Marquis, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Morley, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ogden Nash, Phyllis McGinley, and Anthony Hecht. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Poetry - Poetry | American - General - Literary Collections | American - General |
| Dewey: 811.070 |
| LCCN: 2003046636 |
| Series: American Poets Project |
| Physical Information: 0.65" H x 4.72" W x 7.8" (0.57 lbs) 219 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Irreverent, playful, and inventive, the American light verse of the past century offers a brimming feast of urbane pleasures. Bubbling over with engaging parodies, sparkling aphorisms, and wisecracking asides, the poems gathered here display a sure-footed handling of the poet's art. The foremost practitioners of light verse "took delight not only in what they had to say but in their precise manner of saying it," writes John Hollander in his introduction. "What makes it mean something is . . . the unique pleasure that poets and readers alike can take in that craft." The poets in this volume included journalists, playwrights, screenwriters, and also some of the greatest poets of the century. We have Frost, Eliot, Millay, and Cummings, Don Marquis' free-verse tales of Archy and Mehitabel, Newman Levy's comic twists on grand opera, Samuel Hoffenstein's disenchanted parsing of romantic sentiment, Dorothy Parker's bitter epigrams, Ogden Nash's brilliantly funny exercises in irregular meter: all are among the highlights from a century's worth of poetic humor. About the American Poets Project Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today's most discerning poets and critics. |