The Virgin of Bennington
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Overview
Shy and sheltered as a young woman, Kathleen Norris wasn't prepared for the sex, drugs, and bohemianism of Bennington College in the late 1960s—and when she moved to New York City after graduation, it was a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. In this chronicle, Norris remembers the education she received, both formal and fortuitous; the influence of her mentor Betty Kray, who shunned the spotlight while serving as a guiding force in the poetry world of the late 20th century; her encounters with such figures as James Merrill, Jim Carroll, Denise Levertov, Stanley Kunitz, Patti Smith, and Erica Jong; and her eventual decision to leave Manhattan for the less-crowded landscape she described so memorably in Dakota. This account of the making of a young writer will resonate with anyone who has stumbled bravely into a bigger world and found the poetry that lurks on rooftops and in railroad apartments—and with anyone who has enjoyed the blessings of inspiring teachers and great friends.
Synopsis
The book her devoted readers have been waiting for. At last, New York Times betselling author Kathleen Norris's first continuous narrative . . .a story of sex, drugs, and poetry.
After spending her high school years in Hawaii, Kathleen Norris was woefully unprepared for Bennington College in the 1960s, with its culture of drugs, sex, and bohemianism. But it was also at Bennington that she discovered her great love of poetry, which carried her to New York City at a time when a new generation of poets was emerging and shaking up the establishment.
Working at the Academy of American Poets for her beloved mentor, Elizabeth Kray, and hanging out at clubs with Andy Warhol's crowd at night, Norris found herself immersed in an exciting and emotionally turbulent new world. Her memoir of that time - of her friendships and encounters with poets, including Jim Carroll, Denise Levertov, Gerard Malanga, Erica Jong, James Merrill, Stanley Kunitz, and James Wright - is an inspiring tribute to poetry and a stunning evocation of time and place. Her tenuous balancing act on the bridge between naïve experimentation and indirection and the more focused responsibilities of adulthood, makes for a dramatic and illuminating account of coming-of-age at a tumultuous moment in our history.
"Through three bestselling books published over the past six years, Kathleen Norris has captured [readers'] hearts and fed their souls." - Common Boundary
Newsday
As Norris shares the lessons she learned in her younger years...she offers valuable, practical advice on the art of writing.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewMemoirists seem a self-centered, brazen gang: They find no subject as interesting as their private thoughts, all of which they deem worthy of publication. But Kathleen Norris is different. Her memoir, which follows the style of her award-winning spiritual meditations, is a marvel of modesty and delicate detail. In it, Norris describes her early career as a poet and arts administrator in New York City. She does not hide her own thoughts, but she manages to relay them in broader terms, focusing on poets' lives in general and her friends' lives in particular. It's a beguiling piece of writing, at once frank and secret.
Norris's story begins at Bennington, a small, artsy college that once opened the minds and legs of countless young co-eds. Norris describes her attempts to fit in, along with the ill-fated love affairs that swept her, after college, into a literary life in New York's Academy of American Poets. Throughout her memoir, Norris admits to her emotional peccadilloes but refuses to rake over them in reflective agony. When she records the erosion of her first romance—an affair with a married, older poet—she simply describes her boss Betty Kray's reaction: "'Your first love affair is over,' she commented...She said that affairs with older poets had been the bane of young women who worked at the Academy, and that my situation was far less disastrous than some." Like the precise and grounded Betty Kray, Norris eschews wallowing. She focuses on the work that her experiences helped to create: her own poems and those of others at the Academy.
So, instead of sweaty self-pity, Norris offers us subtle anecdotes about poets and poetry of 1970s Manhattan. She finds some small anecdote about every writer around: W. H. Auden, James Merrill, Elizabeth Bishop, and Denise Levertov, to name a few. She also shares with us bits of poetry, either spoken or written, and helps us to understand how they grew. Here's Norris's account of her friend Jim Carroll, author of The Basketball Diaries: "I was absorbed in writing cerebral verse about angels, and Jim sought inspiration in drug-induced hallucinatory dreams and nods. We both believed enough in what Jim has called 'the poem within' to let it save us. And it led us back to the real world."
Norris's The Virgin of Bennington also leads back to the real world. It's a memoir for people who don't like memoirs: full of the outside world, of poetry, and of people.(Jesse Gale)