Joy (Or Something Darker, but Like It): poetry & parenting

Joy (Or Something Darker, but Like It) is a nonfiction book by poet Nathaniel Perry that explores the intersection of poetry and parenting, offering insights into how poetry can teach us about being successful human beings. The essays are affable and never technical, taking seriously the idea that thinking about poems might help us all think about our other roles in life. They consider different poets and parenting concerns, organized in chronological order, and track the growth of the author's own children. Together, they represent the author's personal canon of poets and present a diverse slice of American poetry.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 156 pages
Publication date: 31 July 2024
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

Joy (Or Something Darker, but Like It), the first book of nonfiction by poet Nathaniel Perry, is a collection of essays that explores the intersection of poetry and parenting. Perry argues that poetry can teach us about parenting, parenting can teach us about poetry, and both can teach us about being successful human beings. While other poets have written about parenthood, few books consider how parenthood and poetry intersect. The essays in Joy are affable and never technical, but they take seriously the idea that thinking about poems can help us think about our other roles in life. The book imagines that this kind of insight is one of the most useful things about poetry. It is not always about itself; it can be about us. Each of the twelve essays considers a different poet and different concerns of parenting and living. Organized in chronological order, they track the growth of Nathaniel Perry's own children, who pop up from time to time in a believable way. The essays consider the idea of devotion and belief, the idea of imperfection, the small details we can focus on as parents, and the conceptions of the world we pass along to our children. Together, these essays represent the author's personal canon of poets who have been important to him in his life and work, and also present a diverse slice of American poetry in voice, form, identity, origin, and time period.

Dimension: 203 x 137 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472039715