THE NATIONAL POETRY
FOUNDATION
CARL RAKOSI: MAN AND POET
Michael Heller, Editor
The last of the Objectivist poets to win general critical recognition, Carl Rakosi is increasingly acclaimed as a central figure in American poetry. Carl Rakosi: Man and Poet represents the first full critical overview of Rakosi's work, from his experimental work of the 1920s and early 1930s, much admired by Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky, through the extraordinary flowering of his "second" career as a poet, from the late 1960s to the present. Rakosi says of his writing: "When I sit down to write, I must not forget that one does not strike an attitude in front of a mountain."
"[Rakosi's] range and humanity persuade all over again that we can't much longer talk of a a 'Pound-Williams tradition' as a sort of accredited counter-culture in this century's American poetry. European though he is by origin and in his sympathies, Rakosi belongs not in the margin but near to the center of what should be seen internationally as distinctively and invaluably American in twentieth-century culture." --Donald Davie, The Threepenny Review
The more than twenty-two poets and critics contributing to this collection include: George Evans, Andrew Crozier, Richard Caddell, Donald Davie, Cid Corman, Eric Mottram. Published in honor of Rakosi's 90th birthyear, Carl Rakosi: Man and Poet also includes a sheaf of new poems and several important prose pieces by Rakosi himself, along with an interview and photographs of the poet.
1993 511 pages
Cloth $50.00 (0-943373-22-0)
Paper $30.00 (0-943373-23-9)