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Stake: Poems, 1972-1992

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Written over a twenty-year period and selected by the author, these poems are the indispensable record of wide-ranging explorations of experience and of language. Brought together, they draw in bold, clear lines the profile of a central figure in contemporary poetry. Alfred Corn draws with extraordinary skill on narrative, figurative, and metrical resources to frame challenging contemporary issues, autobiographical themes, and vivid observations of both the extraordinary and the everyday. Reflecting on subjects ranging from the comic to the classical, Corn's poetry is musical, meditative, passionate, and direct. These poems were gathered from six of Corn's previous All Roads at Once (1976), A Call in the Midst of the Crowd (1978), The Various Light (1980), Notes from a Child of Paradise (1984), The West Door (1988), and Autobiographies (1992).

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1999

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About the author

Alfred Corn

60 books10 followers
Alfred Corn was born in Bainbridge, Georgia, in 1943. He grew up in Valdosta, Georgia, and received his B.A. in French literature from Emory University in 1965. He was awarded an M.A. in French literature from Columbia University in 1967, his degree work including a year spent in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship and two years of teaching in the French Department at Columbia College.

His first book of poems, All Roads at Once, appeared in 1976, followed by A Call in the Midst of the Crowd (1978), The Various Light (1980), Notes from a Child of Paradise (1984), The West Door (1988), and Autobiographies (1992). His seventh book of poems, titled Present, appeared in 1997, along with the novel Part of His Story. Stake: Selected Poems, 1972-1992, appeared in 1999, followed by Contradictions in 2002, which was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award.

Corn has also published a collection of critical essays titled The Metamorphoses of Metaphor (1989), The Poem’s Heartbeat (1997), and a work of art criticism, Aaron Rose Photographs (Abrams, 2001). A frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The Nation, he also writes art criticism for Art in America and ARTnews magazines.

Corn has received fellowships and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Academy of American Poets, and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine.

He has taught at the City University of New York, Yale, Connecticut College, the University of Cincinnati, U.C.L.A., Ohio State University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Tulsa.

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