Joyce Carol Oates documents our precious lives with an exacting eye to detail. She uses the tools of poetry like a master builder. From the biography of a poem, “To Marlon Brando in Hell,” to a plaintive and loving tribute to her late husband, “Palliative,” Oates writes poetry as expertly as she does fiction. In addition, she tips her hat to William Carlos Williams, Christopher Smart and Billy Collins. To read American Melancholy is to get a history, literature and civic lesson all within 128 pages. This is a solid book of poetry to be held in high esteem.
A new collection of poetry from an American literary legend, her first in twenty-five years.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of our most insightful observers of the human heart and mind, and, with her acute social consciousness, one of the most insistent and inspired witnesses of a shared American history.
Oates is perhaps best known for her prodigious output of novels and short stories, many of which have become contemporary classics. However, Oates has also always been a faithful writer of poetry. American Melancholy showcases some of her finest work of the last few decades.
Covering subjects big and small, and written in an immediate and engaging style, this collection touches on both the personal and political. Loss, love, and memory are investigated, along with the upheavals of our modern age, the reality of our current predicaments, and the ravages of poverty, racism, and social unrest. Oates skillfully writes characters ranging from a former doctor at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army hospital to Little Albert, a six-month-old infant who took part in a famous study that revealed evidence of classical conditioning in human beings.
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