Description

An evocative portrait of the beloved and acclaimed poet whose lateinlife success took the literary world by storm

With the publication of her first book of poems in her sixtythird year Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight and living a whirlwind eleven years until her death in 1994 Years later as renowned poetry scholar Willard Spiegelman wades into her papers and poems he discovers a woman of dazzling intellect staunch progressive politics and an inexhaustible sense of wonder for the world and the words weve invented to describe it

Giving equal weight to the life and the poetry Spiegelman untangles Clampitts famously allusive lines to reveal the experiences they emerged from pulling the curtain back on her nearly four decades of artistic anonymity and in doing so assembling a rich period piece of Manhattan during the days in which Clampitt worked for Oxford University Press and the National Audubon Societywriting cheery discursive office memos and two novels that never got published before hitting her stride in verse

Nothing Stays Put is a gift to poetry fans an inspiration to artists striving at any age and an ode to this most unlikely of literary celebrities who would publish five acclaimed books and win a MacArthur Genius Grant nearly all in the final decade of her life

Cover photograph inset courtesy of the Amy Clampitt Foundation Amy Clampitt papers Berg Collection NYPLbackground blue cornflowers shapencolour/Alamy