The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets (Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath) [Hardcover]

Adam Kirsch (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 16, 2005

"One of the most promising young poet-critics in America" (Los Angeles Times) examines a revolutionary generation of poets.

Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz formed one of the great constellations of talent in American literature. In the decades after World War II, they changed American poetry forever by putting themselves at risk in their poems in a new and provocative way. Their daring work helped to inspire the popular style of poetry now known as "confessional." But partly as a result of their openness, they have become better known for their tumultuous lives—afflicted by mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide—than for their work. This book reclaims their achievement by offering critical "biographies of the poetry"—tracing the development of each poet's work, exploring their major themes and techniques, and examining how they transformed life into art. An ideal introduction for readers coming to these major American poets for the first time, it will also help veteran readers to appreciate their work in a new light. 6 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The "great constellation" of writers Kirsch discusses have been praised as the first wave of "confessional" poets, but he finds this received opinion misguided. What makes these poets special, he argues, is not that they spilled their emotional guts on the page, but the ways in which they transformed these personal experiences into art: "their primary motive was aesthetic," he says. Kirsch, book critic for the New York Sun, emphasizes the "deliberate manipulation of tone and language" in poems that some readers have mistaken for straightforward autobiographical expressions, particularly in discussing Lowell (whom he considers the best American poet born in the last century). Such discussion sets the tone for the later chapters; the sameness of the thesis is mitigated by very close readings of each poet's verse in support of Kirsch's account of the poetry's development. Where Kirsch finds weaknesses, such as a decline in Schwartz's talents or Plath's bad taste in equating her father with the Nazis in "Daddy," he addresses them frankly. His confident and comprehensive assessments bear a great resemblance in method and tone to those of his former teacher, Helen Vendler, and will engage any reader looking for a fresh take on some of America's best-known poets. (Apr.)
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About the Author

Adam Kirsch is the author of The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets and The Thousand Wells: Poems. Book critic of the New York Sun, he lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (May 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393051978
• ISBN-13: 978-0393051971
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #685,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( P ) > Plath, Sylvia
  • #75 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( A ) > Adams, John

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Surgeon's Gift: Inspiration and Clarity, June 15, 2006

By 

Janet Riehl "Riehlife Village Wisdom for the ... (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets (Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath) (Hardcover)

Adam Kirsch takes his title "The Wounded Surgeon" from T. S. Eliot's poem "East Coker":

"The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part."

In his introduction, Kirsch explains: "T.S. image evokes the resolve, not to say heroism, that these poets displayed by submitting their most intimate and painful experiences to the objective discipline of art. . . . But the suffering that afflicted this group of poets becomes significant only because they examined it with the surgeon's rigor, detachment, and skill" (p. xi).

Kirsch does the same--examines with "rigor, detachment and skill"--the body of these six poets' lives and works. His close readings deepen our understanding of how their lives and work intertwined, influenced, and yes, (as the subtitle says) transformed each other.

Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Jarrell, Schwartz, and Plath never had a better reader--certainly not in one place. Each chapter illumines the other as Kirsch patiently explores his thesis and shows the rise and (and in the case of Schwartz) the fall of their talents.

Kirch shows their education and work in the context of the literary movements of the time--modernism and The New Criticism. These six poets scrambled a path through Moderism to a new form of poetic expression that would stamp itself on generations of poets to come. This new way of writing allowed the breath and messiness of life to come inside the poem, not be held aloof and at bay outside.

Personally, I especially enjoyed his chapter on Elizabeth Bishop ("Everything only connected by 'and'and 'and'") as Kirch elucidates Bishop's search to "contain loss in art, the scream in the clang." I came away with a profound appreciation of Bishop as craftsperson (maker), poet, person, and woman...and, can now take these insights back to reading her work.

I also found inspiration and greater clarity for my own work from reading this book. What greater gift can a writer ask?

--Janet Grace Riehl,Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetic Purging, June 1, 2005

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets (Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath) (Hardcover)

Adam Kirsch has written an interesting 'surgical procedure' in the THE WOUNDED SURGEON: he defends the so-called 'Confessional Poets' Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz whose work from 1940 through the 1970s, praising "the resolve, not to say heroism, that these poets displayed by submitting their most intimate and painful experiences to the objective discipline of art."

In clear and at all times illuminating prose Kirsch examines each of these six poets and relates the personal lives that influenced their major works. Not a gossip column this, but an erudite exploration of how pain and death and disappointment and tragedy of all manner drove these poets to validate their own sorrows and rage rather that imagining those feelings or assigning them to fictitious personages.

While most everyone knows the life and times and resulting poetry of Sylvia Plath (endless biographies and films have seen to that), few of the others' lives are understood. Kirsch sets the record straight and in doing so makes lucid some of the more obtuse works included in this book.

Some would argue that Kirsch's thesis goes on too long, but in getting into the minds and hearts of poets can be a lengthy process. Kirsch has done a fine job of study on these six poets and lets us see how their art transformed their lives by their confessional poetry. Grady Harp, June 05

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a poet or critic, August 1, 2005

By 

Jordan E. Horowitz "avid reader" (Long Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets (Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath) (Hardcover)

I have little to no experience with poetry criticism and little appreciation for modern poetry. I was hoping this book would provide me with some education so I could appreciate poetry to a greater extent. Well, it did that and more. I found the book very interesting. Although a "dense" read (I read many sections more than once to understand them), I found it worth my time. I came away with an understanding of these poets and how to read their, and others', poetry. I found the analyses to be straightforward and not full of a lot of insider jargon. Although I have no sense of how much the author's comments are revisionist, repetitive of prior work, or new; I found them to be well-substantiated and supported by some wonderful examples of poems.