A Difficult Grace
On Poets, Poetry, and Writing
Title Details
Pages: 200
Trim size: 5.500in x 8.250in
Formats
Paperback
Pub Date: 10/25/2000
ISBN: 9-780-8203-2231-5
List Price: $28.95
Related Subjects
A Difficult Grace
On Poets, Poetry, and Writing
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- Description
- Reviews
- Awards
A Difficult Grace presents a challenging, considered definition of the art, discriminates among poems and poets, and indicates poetry's place in the human spirit and in society. Ryan's bold, essayistic manner draws on a scholarly knowledge of literary history and of formal matters. . . . The book is well written in a way that expresses conviction as well as knowledge. In its depth and excellence, this crisp, passionate, and learned book is a significant contribution by an important American poet.
—Robert Pinsky
With articulate scrutiny, Ryan reaffirms the necessary connections of ‘tradition and the individual talent,’ the timelessness of great art, and a notion of poetry as both ‘communal enterprise’ and intensely personal vocation. This is an important, galvanizing book for students of poetry, for novitiates of writing, and for contemporary poets at the millennium.
—Ellen Bryant Voigt
Winner
Whiting Award, Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation