With a perfect balance of playfulness, humor, and apology, Philip
Brady calls himself a bard. But he explains that, before the title
became shrouded in mystery, bards were simply teachers, unknown and
poor, who gave literal voice to poems through recitations. Woven
throughout these twenty essays is Brady's resistance to the
academic expectations and settings of poetic instruction, enabling
him to elicit the most authentic and surprising responses from a
range of voices. He is motivated by the possibility of poetry
expressed in the grittiest of places and takes readers from the
rust belts of Ohio, to the far-flung pubs of Ireland, to Zairian
classrooms with few books and fidgety lightbulbs. Most of all, he
believes that, while bad poetry is a fact of life, good poetry
should be studied and learned by heart. Brady doesn't resort to
dissecting poems here, though poems-his own and those of many of
his masters, from Yeats to Tu Fu-do appear. Instead, the poetic
language of his observations seems to fulfill a greater purpose:
"Voiced, the poem is transfigured from a printed glyph to sensory
language: ephemeral, but with a tensile strength derived from the
collective memory that births it. Critics may feel differently, but
what matters to a poem is not how many times it is reprinted, but
how deeply it penetrates the heart." These essays are meditations
grounded in the author's life as a poet, teacher, publisher,
musician, traveler, and organizer. In one, readers encounter
non-traditional students who attend class after work and whose
lives are already shaped by burden. Brady recognizes the tension
between reading poetry as an academic exercise and reading it for
its power to endow all people with a broader sense of the self that
is informed by both the dead and the living. He celebrates the
challenges that his students bring to the classroom by forging
headlong into discussions that other instructors would cringe at-as
when a student declares that he doesn't like reading old poetry but
instead likes greeting-card poems. Brady masterfully turns this
potentially deflating moment into one that is both validating and
deeply inspiring-for student and reader.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(4)
(2)
