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Book Title

The Art of Attention

Subtitle
A Poet's Eye
Author 1
Donald Revell
Body
The attention of reading makes a present case first made, however long ago, by poetry's attention to a kitten or a rose, a crow or a cataclysm. So Emerson was right to say, in "The American Scholar," that "There is then creative reading as well as creative writing," and the best poems are irresistible invitations to just such reading because the attention they have paid literally begets a present attention. The creative act is continuous, before, during, and after the poem.

Donald Revell argues passionately for the transformation that imaginative experience elicits through poetry. "The art of poetry is not about the acquisition of wiles or the deployment of strategies," Revell writes. "Beginning in the senses, imagination senses farther, senses more." Using examples from his own poetry and translation and from Blake and Thoreau to Ronald Johnson and John Ashbery, Revell's The Art of Attention: Who Made the Eyes But I? takes the writer beyond the workshop and into the world of vision.

Praise for Donald Revell:

"Revell is a writer of singular talent and ambition . . . he takes the reader to unfamiliar and strange places and, in the process, he creates some of the most beautiful poetry in our language.—The Harvard Review

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List Price
$14.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-474-9
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
120
Series
Series
Trim Size
Trim Size
5 x 7
Keynote
Donald Revell's rhapsode on turning life into poetry

About the Author

Donald  Revell
Credit: Francois Camoin
 Donald Revell is the author of The Art of Attention and ten poetry collections, including A Thief of Strings, Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems, and My Mojave, which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Utah and lives in the desert south of Las Vegas.
 
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Praise

  • “Revell offers some clear-headed observations about individual poets, and his particular brand of irreverent humor, along with his declamatory force, makes his book compelling to read, as he intentionally blurs the boundaries between autobiography and criticism, memoir and poetic manifesto.”—The Georgia Review
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