Consolation at Ground Zero

Many poems in this first collection by a poet who has found keen readers in a wide range of literary journals, anthologies, chapbooks, etc. have the tight-knit structure and emotional impact of the best short fictions; their elegaic rhythms and figurative daring lift them to poetry's highest levels.Brooke Horvath imbues even the most mundane scenes and objects - backyards, movie theaters, family snapshots, a lifted spoon, and a garden's zinnias, bush-beans, weeds - with mythic dimensions, the classic pathos of the spirit's endurance in our tragic world. His poetic gifts are amply supported by the scholarship and critical sense that place him in the tradition of E. A. Robinson, Allen Tate, Anthony Hecht, and Richard Howard.

Literature & Fiction

Horvath, Brooke

Poetry

Eastern Washington Univ Pr

Many poems in this first collection by a poet who has found keen readers in a wide range of literary journals, anthologies, chapbooks, etc. have the tight-knit structure and emotional impact of the best short fictions; their elegaic rhythms and figurative daring lift them to poetry's highest levels. Brooke Horvath imbues even the most mundane scenes and objects - backyards, movie theaters, family snapshots, a lifted spoon, and a garden's zinnias, bush-beans, weeds - with mythic dimensions, the classic pathos of the spirit's endurance in our tragic world. His poetic gifts are amply supported by the scholarship and critical sense that place him in the tradition of E. A. Robinson, Allen Tate, Anthony Hecht, and Richard Howard.

Understanding Nelson Algren traces the career of a writer best known for his novels The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side. From Algren's first short stories through his final fiction, the posthumously published The Devil's Stocking, Brooke Horvath surveys the literary contributions of a writer known as the voice of America's dispossessed. Horvath offers an introduction to the life and work of the Chicagoan who wrote about the underclass in the Windy City and beyond, bringing to the fore their humanity and aspirations. He proposes that while it is appropriate to view Algren's work through the lenses of literary naturalism, disenchanted social critique, and (in later his works) postmodernism, Algren's ideological concerns should not eclipse his considerable stylistic achievements, including his lyricism and humor. Examining Algren's eleven major works in the contexts of the writer's life and changing literary tastes, Horvath sets Algren's evolution as a writer against the backdrop of America's shifting social, political, and economic landscape. and that reappear in his work: Why do so many Americas fail? How do they view their own failure? How do the successful view those at the bottom of the economic order? And to what extent do the middle and upper classes experience failure or require salvific intervention?

Understanding Nelson Algren (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)

History & Criticism

University of South Carolina Press

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Books by Horvath, Brooke

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Horvath, Brooke. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Consolation at Ground Zero

Consolation at Ground Zero

Understanding Nelson Algren (Understanding Contemporary American Literature)