Poetry Book Club: "Strange Angels" by William Pitt Root
About this Event
This monthly book club, led by Doug Knowlton, is for those who like to read and discuss poetry. It celebrates the integral role of poets and poetry in life and literature. December's selection is Strange Angels by William Pitt Root, a collection that brings together decades of work from one of America's most accomplished poets of landscape, memory, and the natural world.
We meet in person in the loft of our store in The Mark building at 117 South Pineapple Avenue. The cost is your purchase of the book ($16), which can be picked up at Bookstore1 any time before our meeting.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A revered American poet, William Pitt Root concerns himself with those extremes—spiritual, physical, or both—at which social and cultural forms disintegrate, leaving the individual as an unshielded witness to transitioning miracles that induce a state of awe that cannot be diminished, diverted, or ignored. In poem after poem, Root compels the reader to discover that these key moments require the heart to open and the mind to still in order to fully accept whatever results, whether it is to suffer inconsolably or to discover new facets of wisdom. With an imagery that is by turns beautiful, tender, provocative, and terrifying, this collection signals the triumphant return of a poet of national renown.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
William Pitt Root grew up on his father’s farm in Florida. He earned a BA at the University of Washington, where he studied with David Wagoner, and an MFA at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Influenced by Langston Hughes and Wendell Berry, Root composes expansive, musical free-verse poems that are politically engaged. In a piece Root wrote during his tenure as the first poet laureate of Tucson, he stated, “Whereas Poetry may strengthen the weak and the injured, give recognition to the neglected and dignity to the afflicted, Poetry may also give the gift of affliction to those grown arrogantly careless in their strength.”
Root’s numerous poetry collections include Strange Angels (2013), White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West (2006), PEN West Poetry Award finalist Trace Elements from a Recurring Kingdom: The First Five Books (1994), and The Storm and Other Poems(1969). Root’s poetry has been featured in several anthologies, including What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019), And What Rough Beast: Poems at the End of the Century (1999), and The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology (1988).
His honors include the Southern Review’s Guy Owen Prize and three Pushcart Prizes as well as a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and other fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The poetry editor for the literary journal Cutthroat, Root has taught at Hunter College, Michigan State, and the University of Montana. He lives with his wife, poet Pamela Uschuk, near Durango, Colorado.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 19.04
