The Hand of The Poet: Poems and Papers in Manuscript

This unique volume celebrates poetry by providing a personal, intimate connection with the act of its creation. Based on an enormously successful exhibition at The New York Public Library, The Hand of the Poet draws the reader into the real world of the poet-- ink spots, tobacco stains, and all-- by presenting a wide range of working drafts, letters, diary entries, photographs, and memorabilia. One hundred writers from the seventeenth century to the present day are represented, from John Donne to Mark Strand, Samuel Coleridge to Anne Waldman, Lord Byron to Julia Alvarez, William Blake to Lorine Niedecker and Stanley Kunitz. Writers better known for their prose are included here as well-- Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov, among others.