Love, Amy
Love, Amy
Columbia University Press | August 19, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0231132867 | 336 pages | PDF | 1.38 MB
Columbia University Press | August 19, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0231132867 | 336 pages | PDF | 1.38 MB
Composed over a forty-four year period, Clampitt's letters are written in a markedly different voice from that of her intricate, highly learned poems. Here we get her recipe for granola, her thoughts on proper attire for Manhattan parties ("Being underdressed is the best way of keeping one's perspective"), and her complaints about literary types ("miserable") and "Paradise Lost" ("dull and pompous"). Clampitt achieved recognition for her writing late in life, and it is fascinating to learn of the many things she was doing before then, such as getting jailed for participating in political protests. Her letters are suffused with an inexorable optimism, devoid of any tinge of writerly melancholy or self-pity.