{"product_id":"by-heart-reflections-of-a-rust-belt-bard-paperback","title":"By Heart: Reflections of a Rust Belt Bard - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003ePhilip Brady\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith a perfect balance of playfulness, humor, and apology, Philip Brady calls himself a bard. But he explains that, before the title became shrouded in mystery, bards were simply teachers, unknown and poor, who gave literal voice to poems through recitations. Woven throughout these twenty essays is Brady's resistance to the academic expectations and settings of poetic instruction, enabling him to elicit the most authentic and surprising responses from a range of voices. He is motivated by the possibility of poetry expressed in the grittiest of places and takes readers from the rust belts of Ohio, to the far-flung pubs of Ireland, to Zairian classrooms with few books and fidgety lightbulbs. Most of all, he believes that, while bad poetry is a fact of life, good poetry should be studied and learned by heart. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBrady doesn't resort to dissecting poems here, though poems-his own and those of many of his masters, from Yeats to Tu Fu-do appear. Instead, the poetic language of his observations seems to fulfill a greater purpose: \"Voiced, the poem is transfigured from a printed glyph to sensory language: ephemeral, but with a tensile strength derived from the collective memory that births it. Critics may feel differently, but what matters to a poem is not how many times it is reprinted, but how deeply it penetrates the heart.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThese essays are meditations grounded in the author's life as a poet, teacher, publisher, musician, traveler, and organizer. In one, readers encounter non-traditional students who attend class after work and whose lives are already shaped by burden. Brady recognizes the tension between reading poetry as an academic exercise and reading it for its power to endow all people with a broader sense of the self that is informed by both the dead and the living. He celebrates the challenges that his students bring to the classroom by forging headlong into discussions that other instructors would cringe at-as when a student declares that he doesn't like reading old poetry but instead likes greeting-card poems. Brady masterfully turns this potentially deflating moment into one that is both validating and deeply inspiring-for student and reader. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhilip Brady is a professor of English at Youngstown State University, where he directs the Poetry Center and Etruscan Press. He is the author of three books of poetry, Weal (winner of Ashland Poetry Press's Snyder Prize); Forged Correspondences, (chosen for Ploughshares' Editors' Shelf by Maxine Kumin); and Fathom; and a memoir, To Prove My Blood: A Memoir of Emigrations \u0026amp; the Afterlife. He is the co-editor, with James F. Carens, of Critical Essays on James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He plays in Brady's Leap, a New-Celtic band which has produced two CD's of original music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 180\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.6 x 8.9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e April 30, 2019\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52029258367277,"sku":"9781621905240","price":20.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0938\/3185\/6429\/files\/hdpPXFfuu9781621905240.webp?v=1777463437","url":"https:\/\/ishookbooks.com\/products\/by-heart-reflections-of-a-rust-belt-bard-paperback","provider":"iShook Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}