The Room and the World - by Laura McCullough (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first book of its kind to explore and unpack the Pulitzer winning poet's oeuvre.

Book Synopsis

The Room and the World: Essays on the Poet Stephen Dunn is the first book of its kind to explore and unpack the Pulitzer-winning poet's oeuvre. Including twenty-four essays, a foreword by poet and essayist Dave Smith, and an introduction by Laura McCullough, this anthology illuminates Dunn's development as a writer, his thematic obsessions, and his strategies and maneuvers on the page; it also locates him in the pantheon of essential American poets. Philosophical, funny, and founded on the juxtaposition of ideas with masterful tonal layering and texture, Dunn's poems are considered some of the best of his generation. The contributing poets and scholars, including Dunn's contemporaries and former students, highlight Dunn's meditations on freedom and constraint, sexuality and sorrow, sound and sense, and the mystery in the dailiness of living. Fans will find this a crucial text that reveals the complexities of Dunn's poetry and much about the man himself.

Review Quotes

The Room and the World aptly captures the minute and the far-reaching in Stephen Dunn's impressive body of work. Laura McCullough has curated and culled essays that accentuate the full breadth and depth of the man, while always holding a critical eye to what matters; these shaped reflections and keen insights direct the reader deeper into Dunn's poetry, his formal control and philosophical wit which grapples with our everyday lives, and we meet a citizen of acute memory and astute dreaming, a voice that risks profundity. The Room and the World helps us to gauge the man behind an unforgettable language of daily living and imagination.-- "Yusef Komunyakaa, author of The Chameleon Couch: Poems"

About the Author

Stephen Dunn is the author of sixteen books, including Different Hours, which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College.

Laura McCullough is a poet and writer whose books include Rigger Death and Hoist Another, Panic, and Speech Acts.