University of Iowa Press, 1994 eISBN: 978-1-58729-253-8 | Paper: 978-0-87745-450-2 Library of Congress Classification PS3573.O5946I5 1994 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
John Wood is well known for his brilliant writing on the history of photography, but for many years he has also centered on his work as a poet, publishing in some of the very best magazines and gaining the deep admiration of many writers and poets. This book is testimony of his devotion to his craft – a fully realized, mature, and carefully constructed collection.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Wood is one of the premier historians of early photography, and his books on daguerreotypes and ambrotypes are widely recognized as landmark publications. His other books include The Daguerreotype: A Sesquicentennial Celebration, named the outstanding book of the year by the American Photographic Historical Society; America and the Daguerreotype, named one of the outstanding academic books of 1992 by Choice; The Art of the Autochrome: The Birth of Color Photography; and In Primary Light, winner of the 1993 Iowa Poetry Prize. He holds dual appointment at McNeese State University as professor of English and professor of photographic history.
REVIEWS
“John Wood's poems are at once elegant and easily approachable. He writes by making simple appeals through the senses, though I find it interesting to study the spiritual man in the sheep's clothing of a forthright, almost commonsensical observer. The poet asks us to extrapolate meaning, rather than to be instructed; he takes it as an act of faith that spirituality resonates in the temporal world and that the sublime may be best implied in the mundane. His voice is strong, original, and pervasive.”—Ann Beattie
“The total effect of In Primary Light is not dark, and this is not merely because of the increasingly celebratory flavor of the latter poems; it is also because Wood strikes a chord somewhat like Samuel Beckett's: however negative Wood's statements are, they are made with gusto and felicity, in exuberant long sentences full of energy, invention, and baroque high jinks. At the crossroads of this attitude and his style is where we find Wood's signature.”—Richard Wilbur
“As befits its complex themes—earthly desire and the vagaries of faith—John Wood's first collection reveals like a prism the gloom-to-irony-to-revelry range of life, an equally complex array of emotional colors normally left blended and blinding…There is no doubt here …that this work is 'the real thing.'”—New Delta Review
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