Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Writing and PoliticsColumbia University Press, 1997 - 272 pages Jay Parini presents the best of his prose - essays, meditations, and memoirs, many published here for the first time. Here too are personal stories of living in small towns, writing amid the bustle of cafes and restaurants, and seasons on Italy's Amalfi coast. With characteristically sharp wit, Parini confronts the question of productivity that plagues writers (including himself): Are writers who churn out books "genuine" writers? If not, how does one explain the legendary tales of sweat and blood, the Balzacs and Dickenses who populate literary history? In some of his essays on individual poets, Parini celebrates the visionary sensibility of William Blake and its influence on Theodore Roethke; illuminates the powerfully evocative theme of Ireland in the poetry of Seamus Heaney; and offers close readings of a variety of modern and contemporary poets, from Robert Frost to Charles Wright. |
Contents
Mentors | 3 |
Town Life | 19 |
Amalfi Days | 25 |
My Life in Baseball | 33 |
Writing in Restaurants | 39 |
Poetry and the Devout Life | 45 |
Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man 59 | 59 |
When Everything Comes to One 355 | 75 |
Robert Frost | 95 |
The Lessons of Theory | 203 |
The Imagination of Politics | 215 |
Literary Theory and the Culture of Creative Writing | 231 |
Writing Biographies Versus Writing | 241 |
Poetry and Silence | 257 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 271 |
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Alastair Reid Amalfi American asked becomes begins biography Blake Blake's called course critics D. H. Lawrence dark deconstruction Devon dream earth Eliot Emerson essay experience fact father feel fiction Gore Vidal Heaney Heaney's hero human imagination Jay Parini kind landscape language light literary live look lost Lou's lyric meaning meditation metaphor mind morning move myth narrative nature necessary angel never night novel novelist object once Parini perhaps play poem poet poet's poetic poetry political Randall Jarrell reader reality Robert Frost Robert Penn Warren Roethke's romantic Sandinistas says seems sense sequence silence sound symbol T. S. Eliot Terry Eagleton theme Theodore Roethke theory things thought tion Tolstoy town truth Urizen Urthona vision voice Wallace Stevens wind word Wordsworth Wright writing wrote Yeats