TY - BOOK AU - GluÌck,Louise TI - American originality: essays on poetry SN - 9780374299552 (hardback) AV - PS323.5 .G59 2017 U1 - 814/.54 23 PY - 2017/// CY - New York PB - Farrar, Straus and Giroux KW - American poetry KW - 20th century KW - History and criticism KW - Originality in literature KW - LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays KW - bisacsh N2 - "A luminous collection of essays from one of our most original and influential poets. Five decades after her debut poetry collection, Firstborn, Louise GluÌck is a towering figure in American letters. Written with the same probing, analytic control that has long distinguished her poetry, American Originality is GluÌck's second book of essays--her first, Proofs and Theories, won the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. GluÌck's moving and disabusing lyricism is on full display in this decisive new collection. From its opening pages, American Originality forces readers to consider contemporary poetry and its demigods in radical, unconsoling, and ultimately very productive ways. Determined to wrest ample, often contradictory meaning from our current literary discourse, GluÌck comprehends and destabilizes notions of "narcissism" and "genius" that are unique to the American literary climate. This includes erudite analyses of the poets who have interested her throughout her own career, such as Rilke, Pinsky, Chiasson, and Dobyns, and introductions to the first books of poets like Dana Levin, Peter Streckfus, Spencer Reece, and Richard Siken. Forceful, revealing, challenging, and instructive, American Originality is a seminal critical achievement"-- ER -