Night School

Description

A masterful new collection of poetry from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize. A masterful new collection of poetry from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize The poems in Carl Dennis's thirteenth collection, Night School, are informed by an engagement with a world not fully accessible to the light of day, a world that can only be known with help from the imagination, whether we focus on ourselves, on people close at hand, or on the larger society. Only if we imagine alternatives to our present selves, Dennis suggests, can we begin to grasp who we are. Only if we imagine what is hidden from us about the lives of others can those lives begin to seem whole. Only if we can conceive of a social world different from the one we seem to inhabit can we begin to make sense of the country we call our own. To read these poems is to find ourselves invited into a dialogue between what is present and what is absent that proves surprising and enlarging.

Carl Dennis is the author of twelve previous works of poetry, as well as a collection of essays, Poetry as Persuasion. In 2000 he received the Ruth Lilly Prize for his contribution to American poetry. His 2001 collection Practical Gods won the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Buffalo, New York.

Praise for Carl Dennis's Another Reason "The poems in Another Reason, Carl Dennis's twelfth book of poems, open slowly and deepen with each reading . . . What he has to offer readers willing to take the time to walk and reason with him awhile is both profound and moving . . . Do yourself a favor: get this book and read it. Twice." -- Carol Niederlander, Pleiades "Dennis continues to eschew verbal flourish in favor of ethical force, extending the body of work that by now approaches the status of wisdom literature . . . He reminds us that poetry is not only an aesthetic but also a moral activity. It's another way of thinking as well as feeling, another way to reason through the choices we've made or will make." -- James Scruton, Valparaiso Poetry Review