Synopses & Reviews
Prolific poet and essayist, teacher, poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, Reed Whittemore began his literary life in the late 1930s when he and Yale roommate James Angleton founded the poetry magazine Furioso—whose pages saw the publication of Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and ee cummings, among others. This remarkable memoir chronicles the life and times of this self-considered “bourgeois anarchist,” whose storied career included four wartime years in North Africa and Europe, as well as a second run of Furioso, which Victor Navasky called “the ne plus ultra of little mags.”While teaching at Carleton College, Whittemore continued his pursuit of poetry, essays, reviews, and literary magazines, eventually becoming instrumental to the founding of the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. In the mid-1960s, Whittemore and his family moved to Washington, where he became active in Artists of Conscience against the Vietnam War. He went on to serve as literary editor of the New Republic until leaving to write a biography of William Carlos Williams and teach at the University of Maryland, all the while publishing the National Book Award-nominated poetry and essays that made his name—and even restarting Delos, a journal of world literature and translation. Against the Grain presents the memorable and brilliant life of this twentieth-century original.
Review
"Like Garrison Keillor, who in a fine introduction sets us off on our deeper discovery of Whittemore, we are likely to come away from this highly original memoir with a mixture of envy and admiration."—Keith Harrison,
Minneapolis Star Tribune Keith Harrison
Review
"Reed Whittemore owns the only sort of immortality that matters to a writer which is to have written things that people remember years later." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"Brilliant and original poet, editor, teacher, satirist, ironist, wit, provocateur, literary lobbyist, anti-bureaucratic cultural bureaucrat, interdisciplinerian." Garrison Keillor
Review
"A first-rate poet, critic, editor, and teacher. An intorlerance for cant. All that is valuable in the literary life shines in this singular writer." Victor Navasky, Publisher Emeritus, Nation
Review
"I recognize a true Yankee in this man, the sort of Yankee Mark Twain would have loved: direct and modest to the point of wryness. Feel free to laugh but be sure to take him seriously." Roger Rosenblatt, essayist for PBS News Hour
Review
"For what a long time Reed Whitmore has been a central figure in our national letters--his whole career has been one brave protest against dullness and stodginess." Henry Allen, Pulitzer Prize for Criticism
Synopsis
Reed Whittemore began his literary life in the late 1930s when he and Yale roommate James Angleton founded the poetry magazine Furioso, in which they published leading modernists, e.g., Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and E.E. Cummings. In Against the Grain, Whittemore chronicles the life of his alter ego, R, whose storied poetic career included four wartime years in North Africa and Europe and a second run of Furioso, which Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, called the ne plus ultra of little mags. In the mid-60s, Whittemore and his family moved to Washington, where he was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (again, in 1985). While R went on to teach at the University of Maryland, he was also literary editor and prolific reviewer for The New Republic, leaving in the mid-70s to write a biography of William Carlos Williams and, then several books on the development of the genre itself. His book of poems, The Mother's Breast and the Father's House, was nominated for the National Book Award.
Synopsis
Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Poetry History and Criticism. Foreword by Garrison Keillor. In this literary memoir, Reed Whittemore—a self-considered bourgeois anarchist—gives us marvelous glimpses into his wide-ranging life as poet, little magazine editor, critic and essayist, journalist, biographer, and teacher. Writing in third person about his alter ego R, Whittemore looks back in a conversational, self-deprecating, voice that in his poetry and prose became recognizably his own. "Brilliant and original poet," wrote Victor Navasky, "provcoateur, literary lobbyist, anti-bureaucratic cultural bureaucrat, interdisciplinarian, his way of deepening, as distinguished from promoting, democracy has been to carry on its conversation in exemplary tropes. Our country and our culture are the better for it."
"Reed Whittemore owns the only sort of immortality that matters to a writer which is to have written things that people remember years later."—Garrison Keillor
"For what a long time Reed Whitmore has been a central figure in our national letters—his whole career has been one brave protest against dullness and stodginess."—X. J. Kennedy
About the Author
Reed Whittemore (1919-2012), prolific poet and essayist, teacher, Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (now U.S. Poet Laureate), began his literary life in the late 1930s when he and Yale roommate James Angleton founded Furioso whose pages carried work by Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, e. e. cummings, among others. His storied career included four wartime years in North Africa and Europe, as well as a second run of Furioso, which Victor Navasky called the ne plus ultra of little mags. While teaching at Carleton College, Whittemore founded The Carleton Miscellany, then came to Washington in 1966. He went on to serve as literary editor of The New Republic and teach at the University of Maryland, all the while publishing the National Book Award nominated poetry and essays, a biography of Willliam Carlos Williams, and—after his retirement from Maryland—several books on, even restarting Delos, a journal of world literature and translation.