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"Where Did Poetry Come From: Some Early Encounters by Geoffrey O'Brien is a memoir of early experiences of hearing and reading-of poems, but also song lyrics, advertising jingles, plays, and novels-that prompted a life-long engagement with poetry. Written in a call-and-response form to reenact the relation between reader and text, it traces an arc from infancy to adolescence"--
About the author
Geoffrey O' Brien, born in New York City in 1948, has published ten collections of poetry, among them
Floating City (1995),
Red Sky Café (2005),
Early Autumn (2010),
The Blue Hill (2018),
Who Goes There (2020), and most recently
Went Like It Came (2023). He is also the author of prose works including
Hardboiled America (1981),
Dream Time: Chapters from the Sixties (1988),
The Phantom Empire (1993),
The Browser's Ecstasy (2000),
Sonata for Jukebox (2004),
Where Did Poetry Come From: Some Early Encounters (2020), and
Arabian Nights of 1934 (2023). His writings on film, music, theater, and poetry have appeared frequently in
The New York Review of Books and other periodicals. He worked as editor at the Library of America for 25 years, retiring as editor in chief in 2017. He lives in New York City.
