American Fantasies: Collected Poems, 1945-1981

Literature & Fiction

Schevill, James

United States

SWALLOW PRESS+

In this collection, Schevill brings together a series of poems that he has been working on since his first book was published in 1947. Diverse characters, both real and imaginary, reveal fantasies of American life and history. The dramatic voices of the characters contrast with the subjective voice of the narrator as he moves through time and space, remembering and anticipating.

Break Out! in Search of New Theatrical Environments

Ohio Univ Pr (Txt)

Ambiguous Dancers of Fame: Collected Poems, 1945-1985

Poetry

Swallow Pr

This second volume of James Schevill's collected poems is a companion to his remarkable ongoing sequence of poems, The American Fantasies, published by Swallow in 1983. This collection extends the scope of the poet's concern with American power and influences to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. In these poems, Schevill reveals again the range of his lyrical and dramatic powers. As M.I. Rosenthal has written, Schevill has “a scholar's appetite for genuine knowledge, a playwright's feeling for vigorous detail illuminating personalities and situation, and a lyric poet's gift for catching emotional essences and nuances.”Of The American Fantasies, Richard Eberhart has said that the collection “...has a Rushmore largeness, a compendious nature, straightforward presentations covering continent-cast experiences over a long period of time...formidable richness of true feelings in monumental unity of tone and strength...This book has a dazzling number of magnificent poems.”Ambiguous Dancers of Fame restores to print most of Schevill's significant work that has been out of print and, combined with The American Fantasies, represents his life's work in poetry. Together, the two books illustrate James Schevill's lifelong pursuit of the unique problems of American identity.

Ambiguous Dancers Of Fame: Collected Poems 1945-1986

New and Selected Poems

A collection of poems by James Schevill, whose poetic career spans more than half a century. The poems have been selected by the poet himself. They include a sampling of new poems written since the publication of "Complete American Fantasies".

Where To Go, What To Do, When You Are Bern Porter: A Personal Biography

A short, round-faced man with a drooping mouth walks slowly along a downtown sidewalk in Belfast, Maine, his long white hair plowed straight back in distinct furrows. His hunched figure and frayed clothes make him stand out among the scrubbed summer tourists. Other people pass and greet him by name: "Hello, Bern!" At the top of Main Street, he walks across to the Belfast Post Office, heading directly for the lobby wastebasket. Here, he harvests a sheaf of catalogues and discarded advertisements, produces a pair of scissors from a pocket, and begins transforming this "junk" into art.Bern Porter has done this all of his life, finding art and meaning in things other people ignore. He was born on Valentine's Day, 1911, in Porter Settlement, near the Canadian border, in Maine's northernmost county, an area known for its timber, potatoes, and depth of snow. He spent his childhood cutting up newspapers, rearranging the words and pictures, pasting them into books, and trading those books for eggs, milk, and cheese. As he grew older - attending Colby College and Brown University (where he earned a degree in physics), working on the Manhattan Project, then the Saturn moon rocket project - Porter continued to make these "Artists Books," refining the idea into his singular vision of "Founds": combinations of mass media images and text that he uses to reflect American culture as in a funny-house mirror: twisted but true.In 1945 when the U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima, he and his fellow Manhattan Project scientists learned exactly what they had been building, and the knowledge turned Porter away from military applications of science toward art and culture. Porter had begun publishing many important writers at this time, including Henry Miller, Robert Duncan, and Kenneth Patchen. In 1947 he opened a gallery in Sausalito, California, that exhibited what was new in abstract and surreal art, as well as providing a forum for poetry readings and performance art.In the late 1960s, Porter returned to Maine; ran, unsuccessfully, for governor, and started his own "think tank" for "drop-outs," The Institute for Advanced Thinking. Entering his ninth decade, and still living in Maine, he continues to publish new voices and create his extraordinary books of "Founds."

Where to Go, What to Do, When You Are Bern Porter: A Personal Biography

Arts & Photography

Tilbury House Pub

Tilbury House

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

Books by Schevill, James