The Kingfisher
by Amy Clampitt
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The cove--Fog--Gradual clearing--The outer bar--Sea mouse--Beach glass-Marine surface, low overcast--(etc.).Tags
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Amy Clampitt's career as a poet was far too short---just 11 years. But she created a body of work any poet would be proud of. "The Kingfisher" was her amazing debut collection back in 1983 when she was 63 years old, and it stands today was one of the best collections of the second half of the 20th Century. For that matter, it has staying power. As I read and reread it in 2018, I hear echoes of Gerard Manley Hopkins AND Wallace Stevens. Her love of words as music, her encyclopedic incorporation of art, geography, botany, nature, travelogue, biography can make some of her poems dense. But each one bears rereading. Even those that seem most approachable at first have depths of feeling, thinking and experience. Read and savor.
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Author Information
21+ Works 617 Members
Amy Clampitt was born in New Providence, Iowa on June 15, 1920. She graduated from Grinnell College and moved to New York City. To support herself, she worked as a secretary at the Oxford University Press, a reference librarian at the Audubon Society, and a freelance editor. Her first published poem appeared in The New Yorker in 1978. Her first show more volume of poetry, The Kingfisher, was published in 1983. Her other books include What the Light Was Like, Archaic Figure, Westward, A Silence Opens, and Her Collected Poems. A recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship in 1982, she was also granted the Fellowship Award of the Academy of American Poets in 1984 and the MacArthur Prize Fellow in 1992. She taught at the College of William and Mary, Smith College, and Amherst College She died of cancer on September 10, 1994. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards
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Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Kingfisher
- Original publication date
- 1983-01-24
- Important places
- Outer Bar Island, Gouldsboro, Maine
- Epigraph
- As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame...
—Gerard Manley Hopkins - Dedication
- For Hal
- First words
- Inside the snug house, blue willow-ware
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)embrace is drowning.
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 811.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3553.L23K5
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 94
- Popularity
- 307,750
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.83)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 3
