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Essays
Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings.The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. As Thoreau made clear in his book, his cabin was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, about two miles (3 km) from his family home.
A few years ago poet Stephen Dunn discovered an inclination to be an essayist, "a person who believes there's value in being overheard clarifying things for himself." As he turned to prose writing and the collection grew, Dunn found himself blending thoughts about poetry with musings about his own early experience. Five essays explore the mysteries of composition, the problems and latitudes the poet faces, and the ways in which poetry confers value. The rest are essay-memoirs, touching upon such diverse subjects as basketball, gambling, storytelling, and silence. Though anecdotal, each memoir relates to the poetic mentality. How one walks in a dangerous neighborhood can be analogous to how one moves in a poem. And if one survives the silence of shyness, Dunn convinces us, it can be a storehouse of the unspoken. The title is derived from William Meredith's "Crossing Over." Meredith's speaker, on an ice floe in the middle of a river, says, "I love this fool's walk./ The thing we have to learn is how to walk light."
Taken from the iconic line uttered by Peter Fonda's Captain America from the 1969, counter culture film Easy Rider, We Blew It tracks a myriad of incidents, events and people to determine exactly how America and the World arrived at its currency dysfunctional dystopia. Using the year 1969 as its jumping off point, the book takes a look at events not normally thought to have had far-reaching influences on the Modern World. Pop culture references are sprinkled throughout to accent the often irreverent tone, We Blew It just might be the most inaccurate yet brutally truthful historic analysis of the culture we all live in and aided and abetted in its creation.
Gerald Stern's poetry has been variously praised for its visionary quality, its scope and passion, but most especially for its wholehearted embrace of life. Stern's special manner of joie de vivre is immediately evident in his prose pieces as well. In this collection of personal essays, Stern speaks to the reader on subjects closest to his heart - family, justice, Jewishness, ecstasy, loss, and love, as well as Andy Warhol, Paris, and getting shot in the neck. He ranges from passionate literary discussions to buoyant anecdotes about "borrowing" William Carlos Williams' hat from the writer's historic home. With seven new pieces, What I Can't Bear Losing celebrates a writer passionately engaged with life in America after World War II and gives a glimpse of the poetic processes of one of today's most beloved literary voices.