BiblioVault - Books about Form

The Benchley Roundup

A Selection by Nathaniel Benchley of his Favorites

Robert C. Benchley

University of Chicago Press, 1983

Robert C. Benchley's sketches and articles, published in periodicals like Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humorists of his time; his influence—on contemporaries such as E. B. White, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman, or followers like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor—has left an indelible mark on the American comic tradition. The Benchley Roundup collects those pieces, selected by Benchley's son Nathaniel, "which seem to stand up best over the years"-a compendium of the most endearing and enduring work from one of America's funniest and most penetrating wits.

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous."
—Robert Benchley

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The Best of Fisher

28 years of Editorial Cartoons from Faubus to Clinton

George Fisher

University of Arkansas Press, 1993

Here, with George Fisher at his very best, is a unique telling of the story of Arkansas and much of America from the time Orval Faubus first came to represent the state to the nation and the world until the year Bill Clinton assumed that role on a very different stage. Fisher’s cartoons have put into perspective much of what has occurred in Arkansas and a good deal of the United States From the 1970 to the early 1990s. These cartoons are also, let us hasten to say, a lot of fun, and sometimes deeply touching, as Fisher creates metaphors to give us new insights into the events that have filled our news magazines, television screens, and conversations.

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The Body of Poetry

Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self

Annie Finch

University of Michigan Press, 2005

The Body of Poetry collects essays, reviews, and memoir by Annie Finch, one of the brightest poet-critics of her generation. Finch's germinal work on the art of verse has earned her the admiration of a wide range of poets, from new formalists to hip-hop writers. And her ongoing commitment to women's poetry has brought Finch a substantial following as a "postmodern poetess" whose critical writing embraces the past while establishing bold new traditions. The Body of Poetry includes essays on metrical diversity, poetry and music, the place of women poets in the canon, and on poets Emily Dickinson, Phillis Wheatley, Sara Teasdale, Audre Lorde, Marilyn Hacker, and John Peck, among other topics. In Annie Finch's own words, these essays were all written with one aim: "to build a safe space for my own poetry. . . . [I]n the attempt, they will also have helped to nourish a new kind of American poetics, one that will prove increasingly open to poetry's heart."

Poet, translator, and critic Annie Finch is director of the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She is co-editor, with Kathrine Varnes, of An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, and author of The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse, Eve, and Calendars. She is the winner of the eleventh annual Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award for scholars who have made a lasting contribution to the art and science of versification.

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A Braided Heart

Essays on Writing and Form

Brenda Miller

University of Michigan Press, 2021

A Braided Heart provides a friendly, personal, and smart guide to the writing life. It also offers clear and original instruction on craft elements at the forefront of today’s emerging forms in creative nonfiction: from the short-short, to the braided form, to the hermit crab essay. An acknowledged expert in these forms, Brenda Miller gives writers practical advice on how to sustain and invigorate their writing practice, while also encouraging readers to explore their own writing lives.

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