Present

by Alfred Corn

A collection of twenty-four poems that range from comic to classical, with one prose piece, "A Goya Reproduction," in which the author remembers how a library book introduced him to fine art

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published April 1, 1997

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Tony Brewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this one more than I did because it came highly recommended (i.e., googled reviews while in the aisle at HPB) and I also have an affinity for Midwestern and Southern writers. It tipped the scale too far into academic (and a bit bougie at that) for me to really enjoy it. Loved the technical skill but the narratives didn't send me and so it came off rather formal and prim. I want to check out his other books.

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Corn's work smells of rural Georgia just after the depressive era, yet his structure seems a bit more like persona poems of some of the New York School and less like other Georgia poets like David Bottoms or Judson Mitcham. He also shares a strong affinity with the new formalists, although he nevers identifies as one of them. That contrast between affable persona and formal rigor can drive the book in seeming conflicting tones. This book illustrates Corn's accessibility and his ability to play with what can come-off as an possibly over-serious tone. His travel writings do not come off as pretentious and his formal acuity does not call attention to itself. This is underread book.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 C812p 1997