Título: Orpheus in the Bronx
Autor: Reginald Shepherd
Sinopse: "Orpheus in the Bronx not only extols the freedom language affords us; it embodies that freedom, enacting poetry's greatest gift---the power to recognize ourselves as something other than what we are. These bracing arguments were written by a poet who sings." ---James Longenbach A highly acute writer, scholar, editor, and critic, Reginald Shepherd brings to his work the sensibilities of a classicist and a contemporary theorist, an inheritor of the American high modernist canon, and a poet drawing and playing on popular culture, while simultaneously venturing into formal experimentation. In the essays collected here, Shepherd offers probing meditations unified by a "resolute defense of poetry's autonomy, and a celebration of the liberatory and utopian possibilities such autonomy offers." Among the pieces included are an eloquent autobiographical essay setting out in the frankest terms the vicissitudes of a Bronx ghetto childhood; the escape offered by books and "gifted" status preserved by maternal determination; early loss and the equivalent of exile; and the formation of the writer's vocation. With the same frankness that he brings to autobiography, Shepherd also sets out his reasons for rejecting "identity politics" in poetry as an unnecessary trammeling of literary imagination. His study of the "urban pastoral," from Baudelaire through Eliot, Crane, and Gwendolyn Brooks, to Shepherd's own work, provides a fresh view of the place of urban landscape in American poetry. Throughout his essays---as in his poetry---Shepherd juxtaposes unabashed lyricism, historical awareness, and in-your-face contemporaneity, bristling with intelligence. A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.
Contexto da obra
Quando a classificação é mais ampla, o contexto do livro costuma depender ainda mais de autoria, tema e edição. “Orpheus in the Bronx”, de Reginald Shepherd, publicado pela editora University of Michigan Press, em 2008 e com 212 páginas, integra a categoria Livros Variados. Por isso, autoria, edição e tema acabam tendo ainda mais peso na forma de apresentar o livro.
Editora: University of Michigan Press
Páginas: 212
Ano: 2008
Edição:
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0472069985
ISBN13: 9780472069989
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora University of Michigan Press oferecem uma experiência de leitura que combina rigor acadêmico com abordagens detalhadas de temas variados, como política, história cultural, música e literatura. As obras costumam apresentar narrativas densas, com análises que exploram tanto contextos históricos quanto aspectos sociais e psicológicos, revelando tensões entre tradição e transformação. O catálogo indica uma preferência por textos que dialogam com questões de identidade, poder e cultura, frequentemente com foco em estudos de caso, entrevistas aprofundadas e investigações interdisciplinares. O tom é predominantemente reflexivo e informativo, com ritmo que pode variar entre o mais analítico e o mais narrativo, dependendo do tema.
