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Judith Kitchen (1941–2014)

Autor(a) de In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction

16 Works 558 Membros 8 Críticas 1 Favorited

About the Author

Judith Kitchen attended college in Vermont. After graduating, she worked as a part-time secretary, an assistant in a carnival supply business, with the New York state Poets in the Schools, and finally as an instructor at SUNY College at Brockport. For twenty years, she served as editor and mostrar mais publisher of the State Street Press Chapbook Series. She wrote several books during her lifetime including Perennials, Writing the World: Understanding William Stafford, Only the Dance, Distance and Direction, Half in Shade: Family, Photography, and Fate, and The Circus Train. The House on Eccles Road won the S. Mariella Gable Prize in fiction. Her work has also won the Lillian Fairchild Award, the Anhinga Prize for poetry, and two Pushcart Prizes. She was the co-director of the Rainier Writing Workshop with her husband, Stan Sanvel Rubin. She died of cancer in November 2014 at the age of 73. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Obras por Judith Kitchen

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1941
Data de falecimento
2014
Sexo
female

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Judith Kitchen is the author of three collections of essays, a novel, a collection of poetry, and a critical study. In addition, she has edited or co-edited three collections of short nonfiction pieces, an anthology of poetry, and a collection of literary interviews. Her awards include an NEA fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the Lillian Fairchild Award, and the S. Mariella Gable Award. She has served as judge for the AWP Nonfiction Award, the Pushcart Prize in poetry, the Oregon Book Award, and the Bush Foundation Fellowships, among others. She lives in Port Townsend, WA, where she serves on the faculty and as co-director of the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA at Pacific Lutheran University.

Membros

Críticas

2.5 stars

The problem with anthologies, of course, is that some pieces resonate and others don't, and you won't know which is which until you read them all, given the sheer range of writers included (76 in this collection).

I only liked bits and pieces of certain essays, and there were many I didn't care for at all, whether because they were boring, or they featured sexual content, profanity, or the notion that evolutionary theory is fact.

I also wish the bio for each writer appeared directly after their work (instead of compiled toward the end), so I wouldn't have to flip back and forth after each piece.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
RachelRachelRachel | 1 outra crítica | Nov 21, 2023 |
After noting some of the big name authors with stories in this collection, I was excited. Ultimately, it was a let down. Sure, the writing was topnotch in many cases, but the stories themselves were a little bland. I read this over the course of months - it was my book in the car, being read when I waited to pick my kids up from school or when my wife made a quick stop at a store - but I looked through the titles again when I finally finished and nothing rang a bell. On the other hand, the Moth collection I read much the same way had easily a half dozen stories still in my mind long after reading them. Long and short for In Short - it's just OK.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Sean191 | 1 outra crítica | Nov 25, 2022 |
What Persists: Selected Essays on Poetry from the Georgia Review, 1988-2014 by Judith Kitchen is a collection of selected essays previously published in the Georgia Review. Kitchen was the author of six books and co-editor of for nonfiction collections. Her awards include two Pushcart Prizes for an essay, the Lillian Fairchild Award for her novel, the Anhinga Prize for poetry, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She has served as a judge for the AWP Nonfiction Award, the Pushcart Prize in poetry, the Oregon Book Award, and the Bush Foundation Fellowships, among others. Kitchen was an Advisory and Contributing Editor for The Georgia Review where she was a regular reviewer of poetry.

I am quite new to poetry and enjoy reviewing it. However, I have no formal education in poetry. My area of study is political science and international affairs. I do find poetry a nice balance to the harshness of international dealings. I like the thinking and imagery that poetry delivers to the reader. It is a thinking relaxation for me and I would hate to spoil it with too much analysis.

As an undergraduate, I reviewed T.S. Eliot's “The Wasteland” and I saw it as the aftermath of WWI and treated it in a historical sense. I came close to getting an "F" on that review because I didn't focus on fertility. I documented my findings but that was not good enough. Here is Kitchen's genius. She reviews poems and even if I didn't notice her points, she points them out in a logical and meaningful way. Unlike a student failing to see fertility gods, she gently directs the reader to her findings. After that, she explains her findings by being intimately familiar with the poet’s entire works and who he or she was inspired by. In one poem she critiques she mentions Whitman. I would never have seen it. I wouldn't have figured it out even with a hint. Kitchen points it out and identifies it. She finds themes no matter how minute through a poet’s work. Her mind worked like a wartime code breakers. The message in poetry is not always clear, but Kitchen finds order and meaning in what sometimes appears to be a jumble of words.

I found this collection of essays to be a wealth of information. She showed someone like me what to look for in poetry beyond the emotional effect. She isn’t heavy handed of monolithic in her findings, but she does show an aspiring critic what to look for in a poem. Reading her essays probably did more to open my mind to analyzing poetry than anything I have read or heard. Furthermore, her work tends to be enlightening rather than dictatorial. I will use What Persists many more times as a reference book on criticism more than I will use it as an analysis of the poems covered. It is said no one ever builds statues to critics, but Kitchen deserves one. She had great insight into poetry.

… (mais)
 
Assinalado
evil_cyclist | Mar 16, 2020 |
I'm not so sure about the editors' assertion about there being a mass movement towards the 'short' in non-fiction writing, but they make for excellent reading.

The styles vary as drastically as the quality, like any collection. There are two ways of reading this, one being to flip back and forth, picking and choosing at will in any particular order. That was how I first read this as part of a class, each of us picking several stories over the course of the semester to either read out loud or (for those longer pieces) have read by the class, the professor chose favorites, too. The spontaneous nature of this sometimes led to amusing scenes of people flipping through the book for a new choice because someone else had picked the same story. The second way to read this is from start to finish. The order chosen by the editors, the order I read this time, is effective in that each story links with its neighbors somehow thematically or otherwise. It was like a great game of literary 5 degrees of separation.

I'll resist the temptation to list my favorites.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
ManWithAnAgenda | 1 outra crítica | Feb 18, 2019 |

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Ted Kooser Editor
Joseph Epstein Contributor
Roxane Gay Contributor

Estatísticas

Obras
16
Membros
558
Popularidade
#44,766
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Críticas
8
ISBN
24
Marcado como favorito
1

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