72 pages / 5.50 x 8.50 inches / no illustrations
In My Surly Heart, the prolific poet and novelist David Huddle reflects on turning seventy-six years of age and records his aghast reactions to changes brought about by the current president of the United States. Huddle avoids the pitfalls of speechifying, pseudo-philosophizing, or indulging in unmitigated complaint. Instead, he embraces the potential of poetry to use intelligence, wit, language, knowledge, and sense of form to move toward useful revelations. Throughout this idiosyncratic collection of verse, Huddle deploys poem making as a method for psychologically and spiritually navigating from his past to his present life and on into whatever his future may hold. These poems traverse childhood memories, birding adventures, musical reveries, the role of art, and many points in between. My Surly Heart shows a celebrated poet confronting the challenges of age and country with wry humor and unsparing honesty.
David Huddle teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English and the Rainier Writing Workshop. He is the author of over twenty novels, short-story collections, and volumes of poetry. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in the American Scholar, Esquire, Harper’s, the New Yorker, Poetry, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. His recent books include Dream Sender, a poetry collection, and My Immaculate Assassin, a novel.
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