Hapax is ancient Greek for ""once, once only, once and for all,"" and ""onceness"" pervades this book of poems. Employing sonnets, couplets, blank verse, haiku, Sapphics, even a sequence of limericks, the author displays a seemingly effortless mastery of form. She makes these diverse forms modes for expressing intelligent thought.
[O]ne of the strongest talents to emerge in recent years. --Poetry
This is a startling first book of poems, charged with so much energy that it practically kicks the reader in the teeth. Readers who expect poetry to give them a refreshing jolt will by regaled . . . It is a pleasure to hail the arrival of A. E. Stallings. --X. J. Kennedy, The Classical Outlook
"Stallings demonstrates formidable confidence in her technical skill, exploring fixed forms, tinking with traditions, and creating her own combinations of meter and rhyme. She also takes chances." --Harvard Review
Om författaren
A. E. Stallings was born in 1968 and grew up in Decatur, GA. She studied classics at the University of Georgia and Oxford University. Her first poetry collection, Archaic Smile (University of Evansville Press, 1999) was awarded the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award. Her poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry series (1994 & 2000) and has received numerous awards, including the 2004 Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry and the 2004 Nemerov Sonnet Award from the Formalist. She has recently completed a verse translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura for Penguin Classics. Stallings lives in Athens, Greece with her husband, John Psaropoulos, editor of the Athens News, and their son, Jason.
Produktinformation
Utgivare
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Northwestern University Press (1 December 2005)
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I recently finished rereading AE Stallings's Hapax and conclude that she is the greatest living poet. That was probably true before Mary Oliver died too. Stallings echoes the Georgian poets and AE Housman. Her diction is tight, surprising and full of wit. She experiments with many forms, sonnet, villanelle, etc. She inhabits a world of greek mythology and historic association, much like Graves or Cavafy. Highly recommended.
A.E. Stalings writes poetry that creeps up on you. She uses language much like Robert Frost: Seemingly simple and straight-forward but full of hidden delights and surprises, both in clever use of language and subtle concepts. Lights up your mind. Highly recommended.
In my opinion, Alicia Stallings is our greatest living English poet. Her poetry is witty (yet deep), has formal elements, and is thoroughly accessible. In other words, her writing is not obscure. Most of it is rhymed. This is poetry as we knew it before the "modernists" took over, with their amorphous free verse. This is her second book. Her first book (Archaic Smile) was, in my opinion, better -- but then, in her first book she was able to pick the very best of her early poems. I recommend buying her books in chronological order.
