How to Draw a Circle: On Reading and Writing (Poets On Poetry)

Literature & Fiction

Beachy-Quick, Dan

Essays & Correspondence

University of Michigan Press

Poetry. Dan Beachy-Quick confirms the promise of his first book and greatly extends the range and scope of his writing with this brilliant fantasia on a theme by Herman Melville. This multi-layered poetic work engages with Melville's text as well as with myth and with the ideas of spiritual quest, the role of the writer, and the nature of language. Rewarding multiple readings and affording continual discoveries, SPELL is a major work for the new century by an assured and gifted poet. "Intelligent, compassionate, exquisite, Beachy-Quick's is a unique voice in contemporary poetry"—Cole Swensen.

Spell (New Series (Ahsahta Press), 5)

Poetry

Ahsahta Press

Poetry. "The written 'I' is famously slippery, and never more than in this seamless collaboration that places the pronoun's definition at its constantly decentered center. In four distinct sections, all perfecting a language rich in intriguing specifics and delightfully sharp surprises, the collection shows two contemporary masters in a brand new light, creating a new 21st century poet right on the spot, and one with a particularly promising and important voice."—Cole Swensen

Conversities

Reddy, Srikanth

1913 Press

Daniel is pursued by stories. His father, in thrall to a myth, has disappeared; his mother and sister, too; and Lydia, his lover, leaves him and the novel he cannot finish for quantum mechanics, the place where theory tells tales about the real. And then there is Pearl, the girl beneath the floorboards, whose adventures hum alongside Daniel’s own.
In this contemporary, contemplative fairy tale, the autobiographical novel takes on the cast of legend, and the uncertainty of memory leaves reality on shaky ground. Can parallel universes exist? Can a preoccupation with Moby Dick overwhelm the story unfolding before you? Where do you stand in relation to the metaphysics of your own life?
Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Circle's Apprentice; two books of prose, A Whaler's Dictionary and Wonderful Investigations; as well as a number of chapbooks and two collaborations, Conversities (with Srikanth Reddy) and Work from Memory (with Matthew Goulish). He teaches in the MFA program at Colorado State University, and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife and two daughters.

An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky: A Novel

Literary

Coffee House Press

Taking both form and inspiration from Ishmael’s abandoned "Cetalogical Dictionary," this highly original work muses on myth, representation, language, nature, consciousness, notions of spiritual quest, and other elements of Melville’s masterpiece. From "Accuracy" to "Wound," "Adam" to "Void," "Babel" to "Silence," these cross-referential, highly associative entries comprise an utterly singular work of art. A Whaler’s Dictionary is the mesmerizing product of a total immersion into one of the greatest novels in the English language.

A Whaler's Dictionary

History & Criticism

MILKWEED EDITIONS *

Over the course of six critically acclaimed booksincluding a compelling meditation on Moby-DickDan Beachy-Quick has established himself as one of America’s most significant young poets” (Lyn Hejinian). In Wonderful Investigations, Beachy-Quick broaches a hazy line, a faulty boundary” between our daily world and one rich with wonder; a magical world in which, through his work as a writer, Beachy-Quick participates with a singular combination of critical intelligence and lyricism. Touching on the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Proust, and Plato, among others, Beachy-Quick outlines the problem of duality in modern thoughtthe separation of the mind and body, word and referent, intelligence and mystery, human and naturaland makes the case for a fuller kind of nature poetry, one that strives to overcome this false separation, and to celebrate the notion that wonder is the fact that the world has never ceased to be real.”

Wonderful Investigations: Essays, Meditations, Tales

Midway through the journey of his life, Dan Beachy-Quick found himself without a path, unsure how to live well. Of Silence and Song follows him on his resulting classical search for meaning in the world and in his particular, quiet life. In essays, fragments, marginalia, images, travel writing, and poetry, Beachy-Quick traces his relationships and identities. As father and husband. As teacher and student. As citizen and scholar. And as poet and reader, wondering at the potential and limits of literature. Of Silence and Song finds its inferno―and its paradise―in moments both historically vast and nakedly intimate. Hell: disappearing bees, James Eagan Holmes, Columbine, and the persistent, unforgivable crime of slavery. And redemption: in the art of Marcel Duchamp, the pressed flowers in Emily Dickinson’s Bible, and long walks with his youngest daughter. Curious, earnest, and masterful, Of Silence and Song is an unforgettable exploration of the human soul.

Of Silence and Song

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Acclaimed poet and translator Dan Beachy-Quick offers this newest addition to the Seedbank series: a warm, vivid rendering of the earliest Greek intellects, inviting us to reconsider writing, and thinking, as a way of living meaningfully in the world. &nbsp;"We have lost our sense of thinking as the experience that keeps us in the world," writes Beachy-Quick, and the figures rendered in The Thinking Root--Heraclitus, Anaximander, Empedocles, Parmenides, and others--are among the first examples we have in Western civilization of thinkers who used writing as to record their impressions of a world where intuition and observation, and spirit and nature, have yet to be estranged. In these pages, we find clear-eyed ideas searching for shapes and forms with which to order the world, and to reveal our life in flux. &nbsp;Drawn from "words that think," these ancient Greek texts are fresh and alive in the hands of Beachy-Quick, who translates with the empathy of one who knows that "a word is its own form of life." In aphorisms, axioms, vignettes, and anecdotes, these first theories of the world articulate a relationship to the world that precedes our story of its making, a world where "the beginning and the end are in common." &nbsp;A remarkable collection from one of our most accomplished poets, The Thinking Root renders a primary apprehension of life amidst life, a vision that echoes our gaze upon the stars.

The Thinking Root: The Poetry of Earliest Greek Philosophy (Seedbank)

History

Ancient Civilizations

A Brighter Word Than Bright: Keats at Work (Muse Books)

The Romantic poet John Keats, considered by many as one of the greatest poets in the English language, has long been the subject of attention from scholars who seek to understand him and poets who seek to emulate him. Bridging these impulses, A Brighter Word Than Bright is neither historical biography nor scholarly study, but instead a biography of Keats’s poetic imagination. Here the noted poet Dan Beachy-Quick enters into Keats’s writing—both his letters and his poems—not to critique or judge, not to claim or argue, but to embrace the passion and quickness of his poetry and engage the aesthetic difficulties with which Keats grappled. Combining a set of biographical portraits that place symbolic pressure on key moments in Keats’s life with a chronological examination of the development of Keats-as-poet through his poems and letters, Beachy-Quick explores the growth of the young man’s poetic imagination during the years of his writing life, from 1816 to 1820. A Brighter Word Than Bright aims to enter the poems and the mind that wrote them, to explore and mine Keats’s poetic concerns and ambitions. It is a mimetic tribute to the poet’s life and work, a brilliant enactment that is also a thoughtful consideration.

University Of Iowa Press

The Romantic poet John Keats, considered by many as one of the  greatest poets in the English language, has long been the subject of  attention from scholars who seek to understand him and poets who seek to  emulate him. Bridging these impulses, A Brighter Word Than Bright  is neither historical biography nor scholarly study, but instead a  biography of Keats’s poetic imagination. Here the noted poet Dan  Beachy-Quick enters into Keats’s writing—both his letters and his  poems—not to critique or judge, not to claim or argue, but to embrace  the passion and quickness of his poetry and engage the aesthetic  difficulties with which Keats grappled.Combining a set of  biographical portraits that place symbolic pressure on key moments in  Keats’s life with a chronological examination of the development of  Keats-as-poet through his poems and letters, Beachy-Quick explores the  growth of the young man’s poetic imagination during the years of his  writing life, from 1816 to 1820. A Brighter Word Than Bright aims  to enter the poems and the mind that wrote them, to explore and mine  Keats’s poetic concerns and ambitions. It is a mimetic tribute to the  poet’s life and work, a brilliant enactment that is also a thoughtful  consideration.

British & Irish

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beachy-Quick, Dan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Beachy-Quick, Dan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beachy-Quick, Dan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

How to Draw a Circle: On Reading and Writing (Poets On Poetry)

Spell (New Series (Ahsahta Press), 5)

Conversities

An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky: A Novel

A Whaler's Dictionary

Wonderful Investigations: Essays, Meditations, Tales

Of Silence and Song

The Thinking Root: The Poetry of Earliest Greek Philosophy (Seedbank)

A Brighter Word Than Bright: Keats at Work (Muse Books)

A Brighter Word Than Bright: Keats at Work (Muse Books)