The speaker of The Philosopher's Window and Other Poems, Allen Grossman tells us, is "an old man compelled by the insistent questioning of the children to explain himself"--and in this way, the world. He begins with creation ("The Great Work Farm Elegy"), recalls the romantic quest of youth ("The Philosopher's Window"), returns to reality ("The Snowfall" and "Whoever Builds"). His tales told, the old man wakes in a stormy springtime ("June, June"), "when the lilacs are gone." Grossman's allegory of life's journey, at once sonorous and antic, takes in the high and the low in these new visionary songs of innocence and experience. Allen Grossman is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University. He counts among his many honors and awards MacArthur, Guggenheim, and NEA fellowships, the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry, and the PEN-Sheaffer/New England Award for Literary Distinction. The Philosopher's Window is his eighth book of poetry. His previous collection, The Ether Dome & Other Poems New and Selected (1991), was a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee.
True-Love is the fulfillment of revered poet-critic Allen Grossman’s long service to poetry in the interests of humanity. Poetry’s singular mission is to bind love and truth together—love that desires the beloved’s continued life, knotted with the truth of life’s contingency—to help make us more present to each other. In the spirit of Blake’s vow of “mental fight,” Grossman contends with challenges to the validity of the poetic imagination, from Adorno’s maxim “No poetry after Auschwitz,” to the claims of religious authority upon truth, and the ultimate challenge posed by the fact of death itself. To these challenges he responds with eloquent and rigorous arguments, drawing on wide resources of learning and his experience as master-poet and teacher. Grossman’s readings of Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Paul Celan, and others focus on poems that interrogate the real or enact the hard bargains that literary representation demands. True-Love is destined to become an essential book wherever poetry and criticism sustain one another.
The Woman on the Bridge over the Chicago River is Allen Grossman's first collection with New Directions. His voice is astonishingly contemporary, his often dissociated imagery bordering on the surreal--yet one hears in his verse classical and Biblical echoes and, on occasion, darker medieval undertones. The brilliance of his imagination works against a measured eloquence, setting up a fine-edged tension not unlike the prophetic verse of William Blake, the wild dithyrambs of David, or the more controlled metrics of Catullus and Villon.
A comprehensive lifetime selection of poetryfrom the Sweet Youth to the Old Man. Of the early work of Allen Grossman, the late Robert Fitzgerald once wrote: "At times they seem poems of great age, poems at the world's verge, at the verge of time." Of the later work, Jorie Graham observed: "In [his] marriage of meanspart almanac, part allegory, part advice column, obituary page, hymnal, epic dramafrom the bottom reaches of the underworld, to the elevations from which one need cry out to be heardGrossman invents such peace as Poetry can invent." In Sweet Youth, the younger poet and the older one meet at an eternal moment and a dialogue in poetry ensues, as the Allen Grossman of 2001 and the Allen Grossman of nearly fifty years earlier respond to one another's words.The poems of the "Sweet Youth", some of them dating to the early '50s, were originally collected in the poet's first three books: A Harlot's Hire (1961), The Recluse (1965), And the Dew Lay All Night Upon My Branch (1973). Since then, there have been six more books of poetry and four of prose, though in "Sweet Youth," all the poems of "Old Man" are new, written in his seventieth year. Grossman is now the Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University.
Achieving Coherence in District Improvement focuses on a problem of practice faced by educational leaders across the nation: how to effectively manage the relationship between the central office and schools. The book is based on a study of five large urban districts that have demonstrated improvement in student achievement. The authors—all members of Harvard University’s Public Education Leadership Project (PELP)—argue that there is no “one best way” to structure the central office-school relationship. Instead, they say, what matters is whether district leaders effectively select and implement their strategy by achieving coherence among key elements and actors—the district’s environment, resources, systems, structures, stakeholders, and culture. The authors examine the five districts’ approaches in detail and point to a number of important findings. First, they emphasize that a clear, shared understanding of decision rights in key areas—academic programming, budgeting, and staffing—is essential to developing an effective central office-school relationship. Second, they stress the importance of building mutually supportive and trusting relationships between district leaders and principals. Third, they highlight the ways that culture and the external environment influence the relationship between the central office and schools. Each chapter also provides relevant “Lessons for Practice”—actionable takeaways—that educational leaders from any district can use successfully to improve the central office-school relationship.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.