In Perfect Silence at the Stars: Walt Whitman and the Meaning of Poems by Nick Courtright

“As Whitman averred, “there are millions of suns left”. And in that spirit, Nick Courtright avers, and irrefutably, that the meaning of Whitman’s project leans into futurity, into eternity. With In Perfect Silence at the Stars, the art of close-reading becomes a Vastation, an experience without limits. In the spirit of a practical idealism unique to America—the spirit of William James, Charles Ives, and Guy Davenport—Courtright has gifted Whitman with a further cosmos. This is an exhilarating book.”

“With In Perfect Silence at the Stars, the art of close-reading becomes an experience without limits. In the spirit of a practical idealism unique to America, Courtright has gifted Whitman with a further cosmos. This is an exhilarating book.”

“With In Perfect Silence at the Stars, the art of close-reading becomes an experience without limits. This is an exhilarating book.”

~ Donald Revell, Guggenheim Fellow & Professor of English at the University of Utah

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“In Perfect Silence at the Stars has all of Nick Courtright’s usual hallmarks: humor, trenchant readings, sustained skepticism, and a tactical leveraging of critical voices both old and new.”
~ Dr. Matt Cohen, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive and author of The New Walt Whitman Studies (Cambridge UP)

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“I appreciate, as always, Nick Courtright’s lively and accessible writing, engagement with audience, and the ambition of this project. I’m impressed by how much ground he covers.”
~ Dr. Chad Bennett, author of Word of Mouth: Gossip and American Poetry (Johns Hopkins UP) and Your New Feeling is the Artifact of a Bygone Era (Sarabande)

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“Dr. Nick Courtright’s In Perfect Silence at the Stars is groundbreaking. Of course, there is the lush 300+ page analysis of a single Walt Whitman poem, a hermeneutic feat that is nothing short of remarkable, and which showcases Dr. Courtright’s incredible gifts for scholarly exegesis and close reading. But more importantly, this book opens up a number of important theoretical lenses for thoughtful readers and university students of all levels with remarkable ease and acuity. Dr. Coutright showcases, in full splendor, the rewards and possibilities of the study of poetry. In a world where humanistic pursuits exist under constant threat, this is necessary and profound work.”

~ Kristina Marie Darling, Fulbright Scholar & author of Look to Your Left: A Feminist Poetics of Spectacle

Dr. Nick Courtright is Founder and Executive Editor of Atmosphere Press, and is the author of The Forgotten World, Let There Be Light, and Punchline. In addition to The University of Texas at Austin, where he received his PhD, he has also received degrees at Texas State University and Ohio University, and has taught at a wide variety of public and private institutions of higher education. His writing has been featured in such publications as Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, SPIN Magazine, and many others.

Learn more at atmospherepress.com and nickcourtright.com, and feel free to reach out to him directly at nmcourtright@gmail.com.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 284 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-454-3

$22

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