Synopses & Reviews
With this eye-opening new collection, selected and introduced by John Updike, Karl Shapiro is restored to his place as one of his generation's freshest and most compelling voices. Here are Shapiro's essential poems: lyrical, iconoclastic, often bitingly funny.
Karl Shapiro was an exuberant force in American poetry for more than half a century. This collection, selected and introduced by John Updike, reveals him as one of the enduring voices of his generation. Included are works drawn from more than a dozen of Shapiro's published volumes: early poems like "Drug Store" and "Buick," which revel in the ordinary life of his native Baltimore; selections from Essay on Rime, his tour de force on the craft of poetry; the dignified and moving lyrics, written near the front lines in New Guinea, of V-Letter and Other Poems, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944; candid late musings on subjects like Kleenex, New York City, and Creative Writing.
"His feet planted on the substantive," Updike writes in his introduction, Shapiro "could be modest and casual but also bold, with the boldness of truth personally verified." Early and late, he was irreverent, down to earth, and always a master of his craft.
Synopsis
In this new selection of poems by Karl Shapiro, master literary craftsman John Updike provides a long-overdue reassessment of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who first rose to prominence with his poems about war.
Updike's great personal respect and affection for Shapiro's work resonate throughout the essay he wrote to introduce the volume: "Karl Shapiro's tone is breezy, surly, rapturous as the mood rapidly shifts. The last lines often stub our toes and invite us to reread. The concreteness can seem defiant. . . . His feet planted on the substantive, he could be modest and casual but also bold, with the boldness of truth personally verified." In the poems he's assembled, Updike selected broadly from the entire span of Shapiro's writing life, and his introduction establishes an enduring place in American literature for the poet whose pungency and vast range of subjects have helped define American poetry of the postwar period.
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.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-186) and index.
About the Author
John Updike, editor, is a novelist, short-story writer, poet, and critic whose classic works include the novels Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990).