James Agee: Selected Poems (American Poets Project) [Hardcover]

James Agee (Author), Andrew Hudgins (Editor)

Book Description

Series: American Poets Project | Publication Date: October 2, 2008

Better known for writing in a variety of other genres, James Agee always thought of himself as essentially a poet. Winner of the Yale Younger Poets competition in 1934 for Permit Me Voyage, Agee was, in the words of editor Andrew Hudgins, “as restless in his poetry as he was later in his prose, exhibiting a variety . . . that we expect from the protean mind that excelled in so many different kinds of writing.” Ranging from intense religious sonnets to lyrics for musical comedy, Agee’s verse takes us into the heart of his unique genius, what Robert Fitzgerald called his “sense of being . . . a raging awareness of the sensory field in depth and in detail.”

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Like so many great stylists, film critic, novelist, and journalist Agee (1909–55) wrote poetry first. Editor Hudgins, whose own poetry is oriented by Christianity, calls Agee “an instinctive believer” who brought his upbringing as “a thoroughly well-churched boy” to his first and, in his lifetime, only collection, Permit Me Voyage (1934). In the passionate and political “Dedication,” Christ leads an exceedingly long roster of named and unnamed dedicatees (though after God, cited in the prose poem’s full title). The 25-sonnet sequence at the volume’s heart opens with Adam, “Tempted, and fallen, and his doom made sure”; the poems’ recurrent subject is love—indeed, love affairs—and the theme of original sin throbs like a bass line throughout. Sex remained a primary concern of Agee’s poetry, usually bonded to a religious sensibility, always to a moral one. Whether immediately religious or not, his poetry is fundamentally gorgeous, informed by Donne, Marvell, the King James Bible, and the balladry of his native Cumberland Mountains. No one writes much like this anymore. Too bad, for it’s rich and marvelous. --Ray Olson

About the Author

Andrew Hudgins, editor, is Humanities Distinguished Professor in English at The Ohio State University. His volumes of poetry include Ecstatic in the Poison (2003); Babylon in a Jar (1998); The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood (1994); The Never-Ending: New Poems (1991), a finalist for the National Book Award; After the Lost War: A Narrative (1988), which received the Poetry Prize; and Saints and Strangers (1985), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of a book of essays, The Glass Anvil (1997).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (October 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598530321
• ISBN-13: 978-1598530322
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,111,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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