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Author Archives: Tony Herman
“We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.”
What is work? This is the question that poet Philip Levine, who died last Saturday, asked many times. He started working in a Detroit factory at age 14. He believed that his work as a poet was “to name and … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged discouragement, great poets, Philip Levine, the fallen, what work is, work of poets
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“They’d be sat there eating on the stairs and as they got older, they’d go higher up the stairs.”
This oral history collection by the York Archaeological Trust gives us a startling glimpse of life in a poor part of a city in northern England during the first third of the twentieth century. Our quotation above describes what it … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged Downton Abbey, eating on the stairs, oral history, poverty, Rich in All but Money, van Wilson
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“That was my mistake.”
Some memoirs resemble novels — they build a story with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. The challenge for the writer is to make it interesting for readers who already know the ending. In the case of Truth & … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged Ann Patchett, learned, Memoir, premature death, Truth & Beauty
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“Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.”
This is the first line of a poem by Billy Collins, who believes the “signature” of a poem is its tone. In an interview with George Plimpton for the Paris Review, Collins said, “The basis of trust for a reader … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Aimless Love, authority, Billy Collins, humorous, popular poetry, tone
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“It was a very clear night, or morning, very still, and then there was such energy in the things transpiring among those trees, like a storm, like travail.”
This beautiful novel could be a “how to” manual for aspiring writers. It shows how to have a virtuous central character who is interesting — a rare feat in contemporary literature. It shows how to structure a novel without using … Continue reading
“The problem is not so much that the world limits your imagination, as your imagination limits the world.”
This is the third of six volumes of memoir about the world and the imagination of Karl Ove Knausgaard. It’s a new kind of writing that defies categorization and is driven be the desire to explore the truth. For Knausgaard, … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged anguish, Imagination, Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, sensitive, truth
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Best Books of 2014
No blog about books would be complete without a year-end “best of” list. For me, the best are “books that I am most likely to read again.” For fiction, I predict that I will turn to Donna Tart’s The Goldfinch many times in the years to … Continue reading
Posted in fiction, memoir, non-fiction, poetry
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“Those who merely write, or talk, about literature . . . should be humble in their judgments and prepared to defer to the comments of those who actually make the stuff.”
The word “humble” is not the first word I’d use to describe the tone of the academic articles that I read for a living. John Sutherland — highly respected and cited in the US and the UK — writes with … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged academic articles, format design, How Literature Works, humble, John Sutherland, UK, understand literature
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“August is huge and blue, a glittering gemstone curving dangerously at either end into what precedes and follows it.
One afternoon about twenty years ago, someone on NPR read the poem “On the Island” by Elizabeth Spires. I was driving my car, and I was so moved that I almost went into the ditch. This poem is infused with … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged dreams, Elizabeth Spires, moving poetry, past and future, poetry, Worldling
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“She’d realized that she was now, always had been, and always would be a watcher…”
I admire young novelists who have something interesting to say about the world. I enjoy middle-aged novelists who share their complex lives with us. But most of all, I cheer for writers like Martha Woodroof, who, at age 67, has … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged compassion, Martha Woodroof, old hippie, Small Blessing, true
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“It is the height of art that on the first perusal plain common sense should appear — on the second severe truth — and on the third beauty. . .”
On Thanksgiving Day, I am particularly thankful for great writers. At the top of my list of favorites this year is Henry David Thoreau. I’ve loved Walden for decades, but now, thanks to the work of editor Jeffrey Cramer, I’m … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged guide for the perplexed, Henry David Thoreau, Jeffreu S. Cramer, Walden
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“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
Of all of the divisive people in history, T. S. Eliot ranks at the top of the list in the literary world. Some find “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” incomprehensible, fragmented, and boring. Some consider it an inspired … Continue reading