Skip to content
Description
By: Willard Spiegelman
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 PLUTARCH AWARD • An evocative portrait of the beloved and acclaimed poet, whose late-in-life success took the literary world by storm.
“Clampitt comes to life here...Spiegelman’s Nothing Stays Put embodies a different kind of investigation, not surveillance but a thoughtful examination that at times still spins off into a kind of awe.” —The Washington Post
With the publication of her first book of poems in her sixty-third year, Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame, launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight, and living a whirlwind eleven years, until her death in 1994. Years later, as renowned poetry scholar Willard Spiegelman wades into her papers and poems, he discovers a woman of dazzling intellect, staunch progressive politics, and an inexhaustible sense of wonder for the world and the words we’ve invented to describe it.
Giving equal weight to the life and the poetry, Spiegelman untangles Clampitt’s famously allusive lines to reveal the experiences they emerged from, pulling the curtain back on her nearly four decades of artistic anonymity, and in doing so assembling a rich period piece of Manhattan during the days in which Clampitt worked for Oxford University Press and the National Audubon Society—writing cheery, discursive office memos, and two novels that never got published, before hitting her stride in verse.
Nothing Stays Put is a gift to poetry fans, an inspiration to artists striving at any age, and an ode to this most unlikely of literary celebrities, who would publish five acclaimed books and win a MacArthur “Genius Grant” nearly all in the final decade of her life.
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 PLUTARCH AWARD • An evocative portrait of the beloved and acclaimed poet, whose late-in-life success took the literary world by storm.
“Clampitt comes to life here...Spiegelman’s Nothing Stays Put embodies a different kind of investigation, not surveillance but a thoughtful examination that at times still spins off into a kind of awe.” —The Washington Post
With the publication of her first book of poems in her sixty-third year, Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame, launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight, and living a whirlwind eleven years, until her death in 1994. Years later, as renowned poetry scholar Willard Spiegelman wades into her papers and poems, he discovers a woman of dazzling intellect, staunch progressive politics, and an inexhaustible sense of wonder for the world and the words we’ve invented to describe it.
Giving equal weight to the life and the poetry, Spiegelman untangles Clampitt’s famously allusive lines to reveal the experiences they emerged from, pulling the curtain back on her nearly four decades of artistic anonymity, and in doing so assembling a rich period piece of Manhattan during the days in which Clampitt worked for Oxford University Press and the National Audubon Society—writing cheery, discursive office memos, and two novels that never got published, before hitting her stride in verse.
Nothing Stays Put is a gift to poetry fans, an inspiration to artists striving at any age, and an ode to this most unlikely of literary celebrities, who would publish five acclaimed books and win a MacArthur “Genius Grant” nearly all in the final decade of her life.
You may also like
Top Trending
Dog Man 14: Dog Man: Big Jim Believes: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #14)
Sale priceHK$85.00
Regular priceHK$150.00
In stock
Press Start! #17 The Super Jump Between Worlds! (Branches)
Sale priceHK$55.00
Regular priceHK$98.00
In stock
Cat Kid Comic Club (正版) #04 Collaborations (Dav Pilkey)
Sale priceFrom HK$65.00
Regular priceHK$90.00
In stock
Anzu and the Realm of Darkness: A Graphic Novel
Sale priceFrom HK$85.00
Regular priceHK$140.00
In stock
Warriors Graphic Novel: The Prophecies Begin, Part Three of Three
Sale priceFrom HK$99.00
Regular priceHK$160.00
In stock
