Paul MarianiResenhas

A fine collection of powerful yet accessible poetry.½

An incredibly in-depth biography of my favorite poet.

From the day Paul Mariani arrives at Eastern Point Retreat House to take part in the five-hundred-year-old Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, he realizes that his expectations and assumptions about who he is, what he knows, and what he believes are about to change radically. In this profound memoir Mariani blends a brief life of St. Ignatius and meditations on the life of Jesus with the day-to-day unfolding of thirty days of silence at the retreat house. His journey of introspection, self-revelation, and spiritual renewal leads him to a new understanding of his relationship with God and of what it truly means to put others before oneself.

Excellent biography. The author clearly loves and understands Williams' poetry and the book is a good guide to his works, especially Paterson.

Wallace Stevens was a complex man who wrote complex poetry---and many criticize the man and the poetry as cold and intellectual. From my 1984 masters theses until today, I have found heart and passion and music in Stevens work. Paul Mariani's biography does a good job of revealing the same in the man and his work.

Yes, Stevens was often boorish, hard to get to know, and sometimes expressed racist and bigoted opinions. Mariani does not shrink from showing that part of the man. But we also see Stevens "at play" in the warmth of the Florida Keys as well as in his poetry.

The analysis and discussion of the poetry is good enough for a biography, allowing for the man to explain the poetry and the poetry to explain the man to some degree. Mariani concludes that Stevens "is among the most important poets of the twentieth and still-young twenty-first century," placing him with Rilke, Yeats, and Neruda. I would agree in terms of the 20th century while adding three women to the list: Wislawa Symborska, Marianne Moore, and E;Elizabeth Bishop---and I would leave out judgement on the current century except that Steven's influence certainly has grown wit time.

This is a good biography for both the experienced reader of Stevens and someone wanting to begin to live a bit with the music of Crispin and his poetic islands and cold snow.

There is very little to tell about Stevens's famously uneventful life. Mariani fills the many pages of his book with very useful analyses of the most important poems written by Stevens. One would expect, however, a little more about Stevens's readings and friendships. Who is, for instance, Ramon Fernandez, so strikingly remembered in "The Idea of Order at Key West"? Paul Mariani was inable to answer this question, in spite of his deep researches in Stevens's correspondence.

Mariani writes a journal of his 30-day Ignatian retreat. It's a bit dry, but has a good description of the retreat itself and of Ignatian spirituality. It's a very authentic read, with the author sharing his frustration, hurt and joy.

NF