Description
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. This expanded edition of SPEAKING THE ESTRANGED brings together Michael Heller's writings on the work of George Oppen (1908-1984), one of America's most remarkable and distinguished poets. Heller's essays, written over the last twenty years since his groundbreaking book on the Objectivist poets, CONVICTION'S NET OF BRANCHES, cover all of Oppen's poetry and how other poets and critics have read him. They touch on all phases of his career, from his early roots in the Objectivist tradition to his abandonment of poetry for political and social activism in the nineteen thirties and his coming back to poetry in the nineteen fiftes. Oppen's work won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and is considered by many to be one of the most extraordinary and original bodies of poetry in the twentieth century.
Author Bio
Michael Heller's poems first appeared in print in the nineteen-sixties while he was living in a small village on Spain's Andalusian coast, a period he describes in his book, EARTH AND CAVE (Dos Madres Press, 2006). In 1967, he returned to the U.S, taking a teaching position at New York University. Since then, he has published over twenty-five volumes of poetry, essays, memoir and fiction. Among his most recent works are CONSTELLATIONS OF WAKING (2019), DIANOIA (2016), THIS CONSTELLATION IS A NAME: COLLECTED POEMS 1965-2010 (2012), and SPEAKING THE ESTRANGED: ESSAYS ON THE WORK OF GEORGE OPPEN (2012). Since the nineteen-nineties, he has been collaborating with the composer Ellen Fishman Johnson on multimedia works including writing the libretto for the opera, CONSTELLATIONS OF WAKING, which premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2000. Among his many awards are grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America and The Fund for Poetry. A collection of critical essays on his work, The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: A Nomad Memory was published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in 2015. A frequent traveler to Europe, he resides in New York City and spends his summers in the Colorado mountains. He is married to the poet and scholar Jane Augustine.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA