Special Offers see all

More at Powell's

Interviews | Q&As | Essays

The Trails We've Tread

0 comments By Jon Bell

They have been on the move for the past half-year or so now, starting from their longtime home in the downstairs closet, on to my desk, then to my... Continue »

$11.87 Sale Trade Paper add to wish list

On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon's Perilous Peak
Jon BellJon Bell 9781570618581

$7.98

List price: ~~$14.99~~

Sale Trade Paper

Ships in 1 to 3 days

Qty	Store	Section
1	Beaverton	Poetry- Criticism and Discussion
4	Burnside	Literary Criticism- Poetry Criticism
2	Hawthorne	Literary Criticism- Poetry Criticism

More copies of this ISBN

This title in other editions

Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry

by David Orr

ISBN13: 9780061673467
ISBN10: 0061673463
Condition:
All Product Details

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Contemporary poetry may seem like a foreign country you've barely visited and wouldn't dream of living in. Beautiful & Pointless, however, reveals how to accept the foreignness of poetry in the same way we accept the strange delights of a place we're traveling to for the first time. Expect a little confusion, many delightful surprises, and a few experiences that will change the way you think about language and life.

Award-winning critic David Orr is what every reader hopes for: the guide who points the way, doesn't talk too much, and helps you see what you might have missed on your own. Stimulating, amusing, and utterly engrossing, Beautiful & Pointless empowers us to engage with poetry as individual readers, allowing each of us to appreciate it in our own way.

Synopsis:

"David Orr is no starry-eyed cheerleader for contemporary poetry; Orrs a critic, and a good one. . . . Beautiful & Pointless is a clear-eyed, opinionated, and idiosyncratic guide to a vibrant but endangered art form, essential reading for anyone who loves poetry, and also for those of us who mostly just admire it from afar." —Tom Perrotta

Award-winning New York Times Book Review poetry columnist David Orr delivers an engaging, amusing, and stimulating tour through the world of poetry. With echoes of Francine Proses Reading Like a Writer, Orrs Beautiful & Pointless offers a smart and funny approach to appreciating an art form that many find difficult to embrace.

About the Author

David Orr is the poetry columnist for The New York Times Book Review. He is the winner of the Nona Balakian prize from the National Book Critics Circle and the Editors Prize for Book Reviewing from Poetry magazine. Orr's writing has appeared in Slate, Poetry, The Believer, and Pleiades magazines. He holds a BA from Princeton and a JD from Yale Law School.

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!

Average customer rating based on 1 comment:

: DuvallBill, August 4, 2012 (view all comments by DuvallBill)
I read a review of Nabokov's poetry by this author and, despite knowing almost nothing about modern poetry (and caring only a teeny bit more than that), loved the writing so much I went out and bought this book. It has more than met expectations -- the writing is clear, his arguments are interesting, and his love of poetry is infectious. It doesn't hurt that he's one of the wittiest writers I've read in a while.

Here's a teaser from the Introduction: "A smart, educated person who likes Charlie Kaufman's movies and tolerates Thomas Pynchon's novels, who works in a job that involves phrases like 'amortized debentures' or 'easement by estoppel' or 'nomological necessity' -- that person is often not so much annoyed by poetry as confounded by it. Such a reader doesn't look at a contemporary poem and confidently declare, "I don't like this"; he thinks, "I have no idea what this is ... maybe I don't like it?"

So, check out the Introduction -- you'll be as hooked as I was. And then check out his website and blog. They're equally fun to read.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

Product Details

ISBN:: 9780061673467
Author:: Orr, David
Publisher:: Harper Perennial
Author:: Orr, David
Subject:: Literary Criticism : General
Edition Description:: Trade PB
Publication Date:: 20120331
Binding:: TRADE PAPER
Language:: English
Pages:: 240
Dimensions:: 8 x 5.3125 x 0.540541 in 6.27 oz

Other books you might like

Girl by the Road at Night: A Novel... David Rabe Used Hardcover $11.50
Boneyard Stephen Beachy Used Trade Paper $7.95
Varamo Cesar Aira

New Trade Paper $12.95
Epileptic David B Used Trade Paper $11.00
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto David Shields

Used Trade Paper $8.00
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of... Lewis Putnam Turco New Trade Paper $27.95

Related Subjects

Featured Titles » Culture
Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » A to Z
Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » Criticism and Discussion
Humanities » Literary Criticism » General
Humanities » Literary Criticism » Poetry Criticism

Follow us on...

RSS 2.0
Log Off

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.