{"product_id":"coming-of-age-as-a-poet-milton-keats-eliot-plath","title":"Coming of Age as a Poet: Milton, Keats, Eliot, Plath","description":"“Brilliant...full of perceptions and rewards that send one scurrying back to the text.” ―John Bayley, New York Review of Books\n\nThe finest reader of her generation retraces four great poets’ first steps across the threshold of genius.\n\nTo find a personal style is, for a writer, to become an adult; and to write one’s first “perfect” poem―a poem that wholly and successfully embodies that style―is to come of age as a poet. By looking at the precedents, circumstances, and artistry of the first perfect poems composed by John Milton, John Keats, T. S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath, Coming of Age as a Poet offers rare insight into this mysterious process, and into the indispensable period of learning and experimentation that precedes such poetic achievement.\n\nMilton’s “L’Allegro,” Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and Plath’s “The Colossus” are the poems that Helen Vendler considers, exploring each as an accession to poetic confidence, mastery, and maturity. In meticulous and sympathetic readings of the poems, and with reference to earlier youthful compositions, she delineates the context and the terms of each poet’s self-discovery―illuminating the private, intense, and ultimately heroic effort and endurance that precede the creation of any memorable poem.\n\nWith characteristic precision, authority, and grace, Vendler helps us to appreciate anew the conception and the practice of poetry, and to observe firsthand the living organism that breathes through the lines of a great poem.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 0674013832\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: PKV.0674013832.G\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Vendler, Helen\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: A well-loved companion. Corners and cover might show a little wear, and you could find some notes or highlights. The dust jacket might be MIA, it might have been a library book and extras aren't guaranteed—but the story's all there!  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Aspen Book Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52585406562591,"sku":"PKV.0674013832.G","price":7.47,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0894\/0470\/3007\/files\/0674013832-0.jpg?v=1780160562","url":"https:\/\/www.aspenbookco.com\/products\/coming-of-age-as-a-poet-milton-keats-eliot-plath","provider":"Aspen Book Company","version":"1.0","type":"link"}