More than a gathering of essays, That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless
Concentration is part memoir, part literary criticism, and an artful
fusion of the two. It is an intimate portrait of a life in poetry that
only Alan Shapiro could have written.
In this book, Shapiro brings his characteristic warmth, humor, and many
years as both poet and teacher to bear on questions surrounding two
preoccupations: the role of conventions--of literary and social
norms--in how we fashion our identities on and off the page, and how
suffering both requires and resists self-expression. He sketches
affectionate portraits of his early teachers, revisits the deaths of his
brother and sister, and examines poems that have helped him navigate
troubled times. Integrating storytelling and literary analysis so
seamlessly that art and life become extensions of each other, Shapiro
embodies in his lively prose the very qualities he celebrates in the
poems he loves.
Brimming with wit and insight, this is a book for poets, students and
scholars of poetry, teachers of literature, and everyone who cares about
the literary arts and how they illuminate our personal and public
lives.