Book Summary and Reviews of Transcendental Studies by Keith Waldrop

Transcendental Studies by Keith Waldrop

Transcendental Studies

A Trilogy (New California Poetry)

by Keith Waldrop

  • Published:
  • Mar 2009, 216 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

This compelling selection of recent work by internationally celebrated poet Keith Waldrop presents three related poem sequences--"Shipwreck in Haven," "Falling in Love through a Description," and "The Plummet of Vitruvius"--in a virtuosic poetic triptych. In these quasi-abstract, experimental lines, collaged words torn from their contexts take on new meanings. Waldrop, a longtime admirer of such artists as the French poet Raymond Queneau and the American painter Robert Motherwell, imposes a tonal override on purloined materials, yet the originals continue to show through. These powerful poems, at once metaphysical and personal, reconcile Waldrop's romantic tendencies with formal experimentation, uniting poetry and philosophy and revealing him as a transcendentalist for the new millennium.

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Book Awards

  • award image National Book Awards, 2009

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Waldrop has long been a major force in American avant-garde poetics, and this substantial new volume is big news indeed. ... Entrancing." - Publishers Weekly

"A complex, absorbing work." - Providence Sunday Journal

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Author Information

Keith Waldrop

Keith Waldrop, Brooke Russell Astor Professor of Humanities at Brown University, has published more than a dozen works each of original poetry and translations. His first book, A Windmill Near Calvary, was shortlisted for the 1968 National Book Award. Recent books include The Real Subject: Queries and Conjectures of Jacob Delafon, with Sample Poems, The House Seen from Nowhere, and a translation of The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire.

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