Hard Roads Home

In this book Peter Stitt writes two stories, one an interpretation of arcane historical events, the other an account of some complex events in his own recent life. Both stories are chaotic, written in a style that moves in eccentric and repetitive ways, but orchestrated toward a conclusion that is like the end of a hard-fought basketball game. Readers will occasionally wonder how the author will finish negotiating these hard roads, if he will be able to bring off their merging. Stitt does bring if off, lovingly, humanely, skillfully, and with some recognitions that will affect the rest of his life, and the life of a careful reader. - Paul Zimmer Peter Stitt is the founding editor of The Gettysburg Review and the author of two books on American poetry, The World's Hieroglyphic Beauty-selected by The New York Times Book Review in 1987 as a notable book of the year - and Uncertainty and Plenitude (1997). His poems, reviews, and essays critical and creative have appeared in The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, The Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, and many other periodicals. He has interviewed several poets on behalf of The Paris Review and was, for eleven years, the regular reviewer of the poetry for The Georgia Review. His collection of personal essays, Searching for Paradise, is forthcoming in 2012 from Tupelo Press. Currently professor of English at Gettysburg College, he has also taught at the University of Minnesota, Michigan Technological University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Middlebury College, and the University of Houston. With his dog and an uncertain number of cats, he lives in an old farm house in rural Pennsylvania.