Available Surfaces
Essays on Poesis
Format:Paperback
Publisher:The University of Michigan Press
Published:30th Jun '12
£26.95
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
In Available Surfaces, T. R. Hummer explores the art of making both poetry and music, and of the concept of "making" itself. He draws on childhood experiences and experiences as an adult, as a poet, and as an explorer of unworldly spaces to examine that "something ineffable about the process of making of which the poem is the exemplary artifact."
Hummer grew up in the deep South, and spent many of his high school years playing saxophone in various rock and roll bands before he met poetry. This musical influence is visible in his work: he often discusses poetry together with music, or music with poetry, and his career has included both writing and performance.
There is a vigor and spark in Hummer's language, in his raucous rhythms, that is equal to the street scenes they evoke. He savors the power of fact and authenticity, and his keen reportage summons familiarity, discomfort, and hope . . . Recommended for all poetry collections." — Library Journal
"These literary essays emerge out of a mind schooled not only in the liberal imagination called for by Lionel Trilling, but also inspired by an ethics of the suffering rather than a morality of the privileged . . . This is a book to place beside Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass rather than John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, as it takes its stand not in a false bucolic past, but in the freed lands of American potential." — Garrett Hongo, author of Coral Road (poems)
ISBN: 9780472051854
Dimensions: 203mm x 137mm x 13mm
Weight: 369g
160 pages