Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Poet Reed Whitemore Reads from His Memoir on Feb. 3rd
Poet Reed Whitemore will read from his most recent work at Politics & Prose, on Sunday, FEB. 3, at 3 P.M.
Please join us at Politics & Prose to honor Reed Whittemore on the publication of his memoir Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet. Reed will read a number of poems, older and newer. The younger Whittemores — Cate, Ned and Daisy — will read excerpts from the book. Refreshments afterwards!
For more on Reed’s memoir, visit www.dryadpress@yahoo.com, which includes poems, reviews, essays on Reed’s work, and an interview with Grace Cavalieri. Below is a recent piece from The Buffalo News by book review editor, Jeff Simon.
Yours sincerely,
Merrill Leffler
dryadpress@yahoo.com
240-893-3526
Books & Literature: Editor's Choice, The Buffalo News, January 6, 2008
Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet, A Memoir by Reed Whittemore, foreword by Garrison Keillor (Dryad Press, 340 pages, $26.95).
CIA "mother" James Jesus Angleton co-edited a fabled literary magazine [Furioso] with him. In his 80s now, Reed Whittemore is a decidedly minority taste, if not exactly a secret one. And yet as Garrison Keillor's wonderfully rehabilitative introduction to this book implies, you can be a minority taste and a secretly major figure at the same time and Reed Whittemore, by virtue of his copious wit, may be all of that.
He calls himself a "now aged poet, essayist, critic, little magazine editor, biographer, teacher." And he writes his memoirs in the third person, as his model Henry Adams did. Poetry, politics, journalism and the cross-pollination of all with each other in all combinations comprise the subject of his memoirs. There is startling frankness here about his estrangements from "money professionals." And when you get, at the close, to his parody of the jargon in the scholarly journal Daedalus, he is ”bless him” still antic and absurdly hilarious in his late-80s.
Maybe the world, at this stage, needs his rediscovery more than he does.
--Jeff Simon
Please join us at Politics & Prose to honor Reed Whittemore on the publication of his memoir Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet. Reed will read a number of poems, older and newer. The younger Whittemores — Cate, Ned and Daisy — will read excerpts from the book. Refreshments afterwards!
For more on Reed’s memoir, visit www.dryadpress@yahoo.com, which includes poems, reviews, essays on Reed’s work, and an interview with Grace Cavalieri. Below is a recent piece from The Buffalo News by book review editor, Jeff Simon.
Yours sincerely,
Merrill Leffler
dryadpress@yahoo.com
240-893-3526
Books & Literature: Editor's Choice, The Buffalo News, January 6, 2008
Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet, A Memoir by Reed Whittemore, foreword by Garrison Keillor (Dryad Press, 340 pages, $26.95).
CIA "mother" James Jesus Angleton co-edited a fabled literary magazine [Furioso] with him. In his 80s now, Reed Whittemore is a decidedly minority taste, if not exactly a secret one. And yet as Garrison Keillor's wonderfully rehabilitative introduction to this book implies, you can be a minority taste and a secretly major figure at the same time and Reed Whittemore, by virtue of his copious wit, may be all of that.
He calls himself a "now aged poet, essayist, critic, little magazine editor, biographer, teacher." And he writes his memoirs in the third person, as his model Henry Adams did. Poetry, politics, journalism and the cross-pollination of all with each other in all combinations comprise the subject of his memoirs. There is startling frankness here about his estrangements from "money professionals." And when you get, at the close, to his parody of the jargon in the scholarly journal Daedalus, he is ”bless him” still antic and absurdly hilarious in his late-80s.
Maybe the world, at this stage, needs his rediscovery more than he does.
--Jeff Simon
