Amazon.com: The Great Wheel (9780393039214): Paul Mariani: Books

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1996

An anthology of thirty-five poems shares the trope of the great wheel, focusing on the wheel of fortune, a ferris wheel, Dante's paradisal wheel, and the wheel of the great tradition in relation to life experiences.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } An anthology of thirty-five poems shares the trope of the great wheel, focusing on the wheel of fortune, a ferris wheel, Dante's paradisal wheel, and the wheel of the great tradition in relation to life experiences.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Mariani's "great wheel," everything that goes around comes around. The spirits of Socrates and Serpico consort in a bar and the sensibility of New York can tell of both "Danny Rossi's family grocery store" and attic cenotaphs, the dual legacy of Mariani's Italian Catholic upbringing and his quarter century as an academic. To his credit, Mariani takes a natural pride in blending the elements of both; he shamelessly pens a cadence and imagery that signals much of his generation's influence: "What is it we keeping thinking of? / Of the brilliance of some perfect noon," with its evocation of Crane and Stevens. It is not Mariani's intent to recast the modernist poetics, but rather to situate them in a larger sequence of time and his own biography. This book, learned, humble and not without its charms, has the feel of being a quiet satisfaction to the author, who has mastered for himself a poetic frieze of his canonical influences.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Perhaps better known for his first-rate critical and biographical studies of such writers as William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, and Gerard Manley Hopkins than for his poems, Mariani (Salvage Operations, LJ 8/90) here wrestles viscerally and viciously with the past. With astute hindsight, poems such as "Falling Asleep" and "Duet" capture the haunting premonitions and condensed terror children feel in the face of death and anger. While these poems don't lend themselves to brief quotations, they are outstanding. When he attempts to imbue the more recent past with similar nightmares, he falls short; these poems seem cliched at worst, romantic at best, e.g., "burning with love's deep hungers." His attempts to move away from himself into personified voices whose experience he does not share are technically excellent but leave readers unmoved. Equally disappointing are the poem-letters to such mentors as Irving Howe and Allen Mandelbaum. For larger collections.?Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Paul L. Mariani Page

The oldest of seven children from a working-class background, Paul Mariani was born in New York City in 1940 and grew up there and on Long Island. He earned his bachelor's degree from Manhattan College, a Master's from Colgate University, and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York. He is the author of six poetry collections: Deaths & Transfigurations (Paraclete Press, 2005), The Great Wheel (W. W. Norton, 1996), Salvage Operations: New & Selected Poems (1990), Prime Mover (1985), Crossing Cocytus (1982), and Timing Devices (1979).

He has published numerous books of prose, including Thirty Days: On Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius (Viking, 2002), and God and the Imagination: On Poets, Poetry, and the Ineffable (University of Georgia Press, 2002). Other books include A Usable Past: Essays, 1973-1983 (1984), William Carlos Williams: The Poet and His Critics (1975), and A Commentary on the Complete Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1970), as well as five biographies: Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life (Viking, 2008) The Broken Tower: A Life of Hart Crane (W. W. Norton, 1999); Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell (1994), all named New York Times Notable Books of the year; Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman (1990); and William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked (1981), which won the New Jersey Writers Award, was short-listed for an American Book Award, and was also named a New York Times Notable Book of the year.

His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also been shortlisted for the Tait Award for biography. He was Distinguished University Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught from 1968 until 2000, when he was named University Professor of English at Boston College. In 2009 he received the John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. Mariani and his wife, Eileen, have three grown sons and live in western Massachusetts. He is currently working on a memoir of growing up on the mean streets of Manhattan in the 1940s.