What I Can′t Bear Losing – Notes from a Life - Hardcover

Stern, Gerald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393058182 ISBN 13: 9780393058185

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004

Synopsis

In a series of freewheeling rambles that combine autobiography and meditation, Gerald Stern explores significant and representative events in his life. He describes the dour Sundays of Calvinist Pittsburgh, punctuated by his parents' weekly battles. We have glimpses of him as a wilderness camp counselor, and later, having been declared 4-F, as a postwar draftee (a stint that includes jail). In the 1950s he savors the romance of Paris. Stern also tells of being shot in Newark-the bullet is still in his neck to prove it. Other scenes include being mistaken for Allen Ginsberg and encounters with Andy Warhol. And in the ineffably tender "The Ring," Stern recalls his mother's second engagement ring, "when they were a bit richer, if a bit broader and a bit more weary." As in his poetry, Stern discovers his subject as he goes along, relishing that discovery and expanding on it. There is no other voice like Gerald Stern's, funny and reflective and opinionated-and forgiving.

About this title

About the Author

Gerald Stern, the author of nineteen poetry collections, has won the National Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Frost medal, and the Award of Merit (from the American Academy of Arts and Letters), among others. He lives in Lambertville, New Jersey, and New York City.

Synopsis

In a series of freewheeling rambles that combine autobiography and meditation, Gerald Stern explores significant events in his life. We have glimpses of him as a wilderness camp counsellor, a postwar draftee, being shot in the neck and mistaken for Allen Ginsberg.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0393058182
• ISBN 13: 9780393058185
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272