Dan Chiasson – författare

Both intensely personal and deeply rooted in recognizable events of personal, familial or national significance, "The Afterlife of Objects" is a kind of dreamed autobiography. With poise and skill, Dan Chiasson divulges the enigmas of the mind of not just one individual but of an entire social world through a beautifully constructed poetic voice that issues from a kind of mythic childhood of our collective, tortured humanity. This sophisticated debut collection offers, deceptively simple poems that evoke highly complex states of mind with a voice that has long been listening to the discordant music of contemporary life.

Both intensely personal and deeply rooted in recognizable events of personal, familial or national significance, "The Afterlife of Objects" is a kind of dreamed autobiography. With poise and skill, Dan Chiasson divulges the enigmas of the mind of not just one individual but of an entire social world through a beautifully constructed poetic voice that issues from a kind of mythic childhood of our collective, tortured humanity. This sophisticated debut collection offers, deceptively simple poems that evoke highly complex states of mind with a voice that has long been listening to the discordant music of contemporary life.

"One Kind of Everything" elucidates the uses of autobiography and constructions of personhood in American poetry since World War II, with helpful reference to American literature in general since Emerson. Taking on one of the most crucial issues in American poetry of the last fifty years, celebrated poet Dan Chiasson explores what is lost or gained when real-life experiences are made part of the subject matter and source material for poetry. In five extended, scholarly essays - on Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank Bidart, Frank O'Hara, and Louise Gluck - Chiasson looks specifically to bridge the chasm between formal and experimental poetry in the United States. Regardless of form, Chiasson argues that recent American poetry is most thoughtful when it engages forcefully with autobiographical material, either in an effort to embrace it or denounce it.

"One Kind of Everything" elucidates the uses of autobiography and constructions of personhood in American poetry since World War II, with helpful reference to American literature in general since Emerson. Taking on one of the most crucial issues in American poetry of the last fifty years, celebrated poet Dan Chiasson explores what is lost or gained when real-life experiences are made part of the subject matter and source material for poetry. In five extended, scholarly essays - on Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank Bidart, Frank O'Hara, and Louise Gluck - Chiasson looks specifically to bridge the chasm between formal and experimental poetry in the United States. Regardless of form, Chiasson argues that recent American poetry is most thoughtful when it engages forcefully with autobiographical material, either in an effort to embrace it or denounce it.

Dan Chiasson has been hailed in America as 'one of the most gifted young poets of his generation' (Frank Bidart). This book - his first to be published in Britain - brings together poems from his first two US collections, "The Afterlife of Objects" (2002) and "Natural History" (2005), along with more recent work. His later collection, "Where's the Moon, There's the Moon", was published by Bloodaxe in 2010. "The Afterlife of Objects" is a kind of dreamed autobiography in which the enigmas of an individual mind become universal puzzles. "Natural History" takes its inspiration from Pliny's encyclopaedic "Historia Naturalis", suggesting that a person is like a world, full of mysteries and wonders - and equally in need of a compendium of everything known.