Difficult Ornaments

Download or read book Difficult Ornaments written by Ange Mlinko and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Difficult Ornaments is a book about six twentieth-century American poets, the mythical Florida they explored, and the American tropical style they created. Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, and Harry Mathews compose a chain of friendship and influence. Only Laura (Riding) Jackson stands apart as a poet who renounced poetry and became a recluse on a citrus farm. In proximity to the tropics-nature's own laboratory of invention and experiment-the more fecund and experimental their poetry became. The ornaments of poetry correspond to the ornaments of nature, which is why the peacock, that most decorated of birds, features so prominently their work. These seven essays comprise a lyrical meditation on literary style that ranges through history and myth, in order to better understand the relationship between persons and places, weather and language, the climate of the planet and the climate of the mind"--