The Education of a Young Poet

Biespiels supple memoir of becoming a poet will surely inspire other writers to embrace the bodily character of writing and feel the power and sometimes the emptiness of the act of writing poetry. Publishers Weekly (starred review). The Education of a Young Poet is David Biespiels moving account of his awakening to writing and the language that can shape a life. Exploring the original source of his creative impulsea greatgrandfather who traveled alone from Ukraine to America in 1910 eventually settling as a rag peddler in the tiny town of Elma Iowathrough the generations that followed Biespiel tracks his childhood in Texas and his university days in the northeast led along by the pattern and random bursts that make up a life.. His book offers an intimate recollection of how one person forges a life as a writer during extraordinary times. From the Jewish quarter of Houston in the 1970s to bohemian Boston in the 1980s from Russias Pale of Settlement to a farming village in Vermont Biespiel remains alert to the magic of possibilitiesancestral journeys hash parties political rallies family connections uncertain loves the thrill of sex and lasting friendships. Woven throughout are reflections on the writers craft coupled with a classic comingofage tale that does for Boston in the 1980s what Hemingways A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s and Broyards Kafka Was the Rage did for Greenwich Village in the 1950s.. Restless with curiosity and enthusiasm The Education of a Young Poet is a singular and universal bildungsroman that movingly demonstrates in telling the story of ones coming into consciousness all languages are more or less the same.