|
by: Leslie Marmon Silko, James Wright
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780915308743
ISBN: 0915308746
Label: Graywolf Press
Manufacturer: Graywolf Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: November 01, 1985
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Sales Rank: 607548
Studio: Graywolf Press
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This moving, eighteen-month exchange of correspondence chronicles the friendship-through-the-mail of two extraordinary writers.
Leslie Marmon Silko is a poet and novelist. James Wright won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for his Collected Poems. They met only twice. First, briefly, in 1975, at a writers conference in Michigan. Their correspondence began three years later, after Wright wrote to Silko praising her book Ceremony. The letters begin formally, and then each writer gradually opens to the other, venturing to share his or her life, work and struggles. The second meeting between the two writers came in a hospital room, as James Wright lay dying of cancer.
The New York Times wrote something of Wright that applies to both writers-- of qualities that this exchange of letters makes evident. 'Our age desperately needs his vision of brotherly love, his transcendent sense of nature, the clarity of his courageous voice.'
Amazon.com Review:
This tender volume follows the blossoming friendship through letters between Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Wright and the then-young poet and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko. The charming correspondences, which unfurled over the final year and a half of Wright's life (1978-1980), are all about the difficulties and sweet pleasures of life, work, writing, and encounters with mean roosters. Silko considers the ways in which her work is imbued with the spirit of her Laguna Pueblo Indian heritage. Wright discusses the need to let a poem sit for a while before showing it to the world, as a poem 'goes through changes ... when you leave it alone patiently, just as surely as a plant does, or an animal, or any other creature.' Together they explore the catharsis of storytelling, the overwhelming power of words ('how deeply we can touch each other with them,' writes Silko), and the beauty of a gentle yet passionate friendship between like-minded souls.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A moving, personal exchange of letters
_The Delicacy and Strength of Lace_ is an incredibly moving exchange between two great American poets who only met briefly on two occasions: Wright heard Silko read from her work which initiated the correspondence; Silko visited Wright on his deathbed. In between they exchanged letters about their everyday existences, everything from Silko's rooster to the nature of another animal, the human animal.
Wright's inititial letter told Silko of his high regard for her book, _Ceremony_ and it's importance ... Read More
|
