Paul Mariani – författare

Poems deal with love, family, immigrant America, nature, childhood, and death.

Robert Lowell's poetry radically altered the American literary landscape, combining as it did family drama and an apocalyptic view of the history of our times. He won three Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards for poetry. Married three times, always to writers, he had his dark side, suffering from crippling bouts of manic depression and alcoholism.Using hundreds of Lowell's unpublished manuscripts and letters, and dozens of interviews, Paul Mariani has given us a balanced, passionate, and readable life, capturing the man, his age, and his place in literary history.

Here, in his fifth book, Paul Mariani uses the trope of the wheel to chart the kinds of losses we all face in living: deaths and separations, lost loves, lost friends, lost happiness. The wheel of fortune, a ferris wheel ridden with a friend now dead, Dante's paradisal wheel, the wheel of the morning sun, by turns call up Hart Crane and Wilfrid Owen, Stevens and Williams, Whitman and Hopkins.

Poet, critic, biographer, and Catholic intellectual Paul Mariani delivers huge armfuls of experience and knowledge in this wide-ranging collection of twenty-four essays. As a man of faith in a secular world, Mariani brings to light issues surrounding spirituality and poetry through discussions of the Gnostics, Roman history, the Bible, John of the Cross, Rilke, Robert Pack, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, and the poets he most admires—Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell.Charged with spiritual and intellectual awe, Mariani fully engages with his subjects, from their lives to their works to their grand impact on Mariani's own life as a poet. His prose flows easily from anecdote to analysis, from Paterson, the setting of Williams's great tribute poem, to Manhattan, where Mariani haunts old neighborhoods and the Brooklyn Bridge, searching for traces of Hart Crane. By infusing scholarly criticism with a personal voice, Mariani allows us to see the relationship between poetry and a sublime presence in the universe.Serious reading for anyone interested in modern and contemporary poetry, God and the Imagination offers elegant and original insights into a wide variety of poetic concerns. But it is most extraordinary for its celebration of the lives of the poets, which allow us, in Mariani's words, "to recover what would otherwise be lost to time and silence."

Poet, critic, biographer, and Catholic intellectual Paul Mariani delivers huge armfuls of experience and knowledge in this wide-ranging collection of twenty-four essays. As a man of faith in a secular world, Mariani brings to light issues surrounding spirituality and poetry through discussions of the Gnostics, Roman history, the Bible, John of the Cross, Rilke, Robert Pack, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, and the poets he most admires—Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell.Charged with spiritual and intellectual awe, Mariani fully engages with his subjects, from their lives to their works to their grand impact on Mariani's own life as a poet. His prose flows easily from anecdote to analysis, from Paterson, the setting of Williams's great tribute poem, to Manhattan, where Mariani haunts old neighborhoods and the Brooklyn Bridge, searching for traces of Hart Crane. By infusing scholarly criticism with a personal voice, Mariani allows us to see the relationship between poetry and a sublime presence in the universe.Serious reading for anyone interested in modern and contemporary poetry, God and the Imagination offers elegant and original insights into a wide variety of poetic concerns. But it is most extraordinary for its celebration of the lives of the poets, which allow us, in Mariani's words, "to recover what would otherwise be lost to time and silence."

An insightful and inspirational biography of the heroic and spiritual poet. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844?1889) may well have been the most original and innovative poet writing in the English language during the nineteenth century. Yet his story of personal struggle, doubt, intense introspection, and inward heroism has never been told fully. As a Jesuit priest, Hopkins?s descent into loneliness and despair and his subsequent recovery are a remarkable and inspiring spiritual journey that will speak to many readers, regardless of their faith or philosophies. Paul Mariani, an award-winning poet himself and author of a number of biographies of literary figures, brilliantly integrates Hopkins?s spiritual life and his literary life to create a rich and compelling portrait of a man whose work and life continue to speak to readers a century after his death.

From the day Paul Mariani arrives at Eastern Point Retreat House to take part in the five-hundred-year-old Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, he realizes that his expectations and assumptions about who he is, what he knows, and what he believes are about to change radically. In this profound memoir Mariani blends a brief life of St. Ignatius and meditations on the life of Jesus with the day-to-day unfolding of thirty days of silence at the retreat house. His journey of introspection, self-revelation, and spiritual renewal leads him to a new understanding of his relationship with God and of what it truly means to put others before oneself.

An “incandescent….redefining biography of a major poet whose reputation continues to ascend” (Booklist, starred review)—Wallace Stevens, perhaps the most important American poet of the twentieth century.Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) lived a richly imaginative life that he expressed in his poems. “A biography that is both deliciously readable and profoundly knowledgeable” (Library Journal, starred review), The Whole Harmonium presents Stevens within the living context of his times and as the creator of a poetry that continues to shape how we understand and define ourselves. A lawyer who rose to become an insurance-company vice president, Stevens composed brilliant poems on long walks to work and at other stolen moments. He endured an increasingly unhappy marriage, and yet he had his Dionysian side, reveling in long fishing (and drinking) trips to the sun-drenched tropics of Key West. He was at once both the Connecticut businessman and the hidalgo lover of all things Latin. His first book of poems, Harmonium, published when he was forty-four, drew on his profound understanding of Modernism to create a distinctive and inimitable American idiom. Over time he became acquainted with peers such as Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, but his personal style remained unique. The complexity of Stevens’s poetry rests on emotional, philosophical, and linguistic tensions that thread their way intricately through his poems, both early and late. And while he can be challenging to understand, Stevens has proven time and again to be one of the most richly rewarding poets to read. Biographer and poet Paul Mariani’s The Whole Harmonium “is an excellent, superb, thrilling story of a mind….unpacking poems in language that is nearly as eloquent as the poet’s, and as clear as faithfulness allows” (The New Yorker).

William Carlos Williams (1883--1963) emerged alongside Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Frost, and Yeats as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. Paterson, Williams's epic masterpiece, raised everyday American speech to the highest levels of poetic imagination. A finalist for the national Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked is a remarkable, rich blend of art and scholarship. From a small-town doctor who delivered more than 3,000 babies to an extraordinary revolutionary, Paul Mariani unfolds Williams' life and times while simultaneously letting the reader inside the poet's mind and language in this definitive masterwork.

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) emerged alongside Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Frost, and Yeats as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. Paterson, Williams''s epic masterpiece, raised everyday American speech to the highest levels of poetic imagination. A finalist for the national Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked is a remarkable, rich blend of art and scholarship. From a small-town doctor who delivered more than 3,000 babies to an extraordinary revolutionary, Paul Mariani unfolds Williams'' life and times while simultaneously letting the reader inside the poet''s mind and language in this definitive masterwork.

Dream Song is the story of John Berryman, one of the most gifted poets of a generation that included Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Dylan Thomas. Using Berryman's unpublished letters and poetry, as well as interviews with those who knew him intimately, Paul Mariani captures Berryman's genius and the tragedy that dogged him, while at the same time illuminating one of the most provocative periods in American letters. Here we witness Berryman's struggles with alcohol and drugs, his obsession with women and fame, and his friendships with luminary writers of the century. Mariani creates an unforgettable portrait of a poet who, by the time of his suicide at age fifty-seven, had won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Dream Song is the story of John Berryman, one of the most gifted poets of a generation that included Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Dylan Thomas. Using Berryman''s unpublished letters and poetry, as well as interviews with those who knew him intimately, Paul Mariani captures Berryman''s genius and the tragedy that dogged him, while at the same time illuminating one of the most provocative periods in American letters. Here we witness Berryman''s struggles with alcohol and drugs, his obsession with women and fame, and his friendships with luminary writers of the century. Mariani creates an unforgettable portrait of a poet who, by the time of his suicide at age fifty-seven, had won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

Illuminating the parallel and overlapping careers and relationships of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, this catalogue juxtaposes the two poets with unique material on view for the first time. With essays by biographer Paul Mariani, poets Paul Muldoon and Daniel Halpern, and collector Alan Klein, it represents a remarkable opportunity for understanding the overlapping careers of Stevens and Williams, their development as poets, the progression of their reputations, and the development of American Modernism.

With Ordinary Time, his eighth collection, the distinguished poet and biographer Paul Mariani shares a vision of the world in which the sacred and the quotidian mingle, sometimes quietly and sometimes with revelatory force. These poems treat not only the social and historical issues of the time--the poor, the marginalized, the casualties of war, the forgotten--but the importance of family and friends, especially in those moments we all share of illness and desolation. What saves us is not only beauty but the wit and humor to see the reader through. A grandfather now, Mariani celebrates a new generation and remembers the dead. If the poems often deal with the ordinary--everything from memories of New York City back in the 1940s to the Mississippi Delta and the Canadian Rockies, to Sweden, the Baltic Sea, and finally Jerusalem--they do so under the shadow of the sacred, which these poems keep reaching out to with word after word after Word.

In Epitaphs for the Journey: New, Selected and Revised Poems, Paul Mariani revisits forty years of writing poems, including revising many of his earlier lyrics, to shape his latest volume into a life lived and lived again over the past seven decades. The eight sections--or cantos--each composed of twelve poems, cover roughly a decade apiece and contour Mariani's search for answers to the constant interplay of the felt presence of the Mystery we call God as it plays with the modern imagination. Mariani's background is Catholic and broadly classic, and warmly embraces all aspects of Christianity and Judaism and the world even beyond those. The Poiema Poetry Series Poems are windows into worlds; windows into beauty, goodness, and truth; windows into understandings that won't twist themselves into tidy dogmatic statements; windows into experiences. We can do more than merely peer into such windows; with a little effort we can fling open the casements, and leap over the sills into the heart of these worlds. We are also led into familiar places of hurt, confusion, and disappointment, but we arrive in the poet's company. Poetry is a partnership between poet and reader, seeking together to gain something of value--to get at something important. Ephesians 2:10 says, "e;We are God's workmanship . . ."e; poiema in Greek--the thing that has been made, the masterpiece, the poem. The Poiema Poetry Series presents the work of gifted poets who take Christian faith seriously, and demonstrate in whose image we have been made through their creativity and craftsmanship. These poets are recent participants in the ancient tradition of David, Asaph, Isaiah, and John the Revelator. The thread can be followed through the centuries--through the diverse poetic visions of Dante, Bernard of Clairvaux, Donne, Herbert, Milton, Hopkins, Eliot, R.S. Thomas, and Denise Levertov--down to the poet whose work is in your hand. With the selection of this volume you are entering this enduring tradition, and as a reader contributing to it. --D.S. Martin, Series Editor