Product Description

Amy Clampitt lived in Manhattan for almost forty years before she found success at the age of sixty-three with the publication of The Kingfisher (1983). Her letters from 1950 until her death in 1994 are a testimony to her fiercely independent spirit and her quest for various kinds of truth-religious, spiritual, political, and artistic. The letters detail her life in Manhattan, a religious conversion (and then a gradual religious disillusionment), as well as her ongoing efforts to find a place for herself in the world of literature

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #478915 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From The New Yorker
Composed over a forty-four year period, Clampitt's letters are written in a markedly different voice from that of her intricate, highly learned poems. Here we get her recipe for granola, her thoughts on proper attire for Manhattan parties ("Being underdressed is the best way of keeping one's perspective"), and her complaints about literary types ("miserable") and "Paradise Lost" ("dull and pompous"). Clampitt achieved recognition for her writing late in life, and it is fascinating to learn of the many things she was doing before then, such as getting jailed for participating in political protests. Her letters are suffused with an inexorable optimism, devoid of any tinge of writerly melancholy or self-pity. At the age of thirty-three, Clampitt wrote to her youngest brother, "Why are people so afraid of being enthusiastic?"
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Review

"Lively and accessible, thoughtful and entertaining, Love, Amy is recommended." -- Library Journal

"In giving us these frank, unpretentious, immensely revelatory letters, Love, Amy enables us to learn more about the remarkable woman who created a splendid body of poetry more likely than many others to endure." -- Merle Rubin, The Los Angeles Times

"This book is a welcome reminder of the unique intimacy afforded by reading another person's letters." -- Ben Downing, The Wall Street Journal

"Clampitt's letters... Offer an expansive view - of her generous spirit, her exceptional mind." -- Michelle Gillett, The Berkshire Eagle

"Her letters are suffused with an inexorable optimism." -- New Yorker

"[Readers] get to see Clampitt's life... The view is as surprising as her writing style, which is clear, vivid and engaging. " -- Elizabeth Lund, Christian Science Monitor

"In short, she is heroic. The Letters are very moving." -- Todd Swift, ToddSwift.BlogSpot.com

"Vibrant, attractive, life affirming letters... In this slim collection of letters, is a wonderful sense of the delightful woman." -- Martin Rubin, Sunday Times

"Here is what e-mail has no patience for: grace, wit, wonder, embellishment, asides, details and real vocabulary." -- Isabel Nathaniel, Dallas Morning News

"Women can do anything. Or, at least, some women's life stories encourage us to believe... Clampitt's is one of them." -- Megan Marshall, Boston Sunday Globe

"This is a charming record of a serious, essentially private life... Recommended." -- Choice

"The smooth, lucid prose of her letters always reminds us that the verbal athlecticism of her verse... is the work of a highly conscious, purposeful artisan." -- Anthony Cuda, The New Criterion

"Spiegelman's impeccable and (as only the best are) subtle editorial decisions make this volume a rare pleasure." -- Anthony Cuda, New Criterion

"This collection shows how she applied in life the moral inquisitiveness and artistic rigour that makes her poetry so remarkable." -- London Review of Books

"He has performed an important service by assembling this selection." -- Karl Kirchwey, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Clampitt's letters, which reveal her sense of literary vocation... are infused with the kind of imagination filled her poetry." -- American Literature

"Posterity shimmers in these refractions of a variegated life." -- David Galef, Verse

"From the first page of Love, Amy, an engaging voice emerges: curious, quirky, opinionated, rueful, celebratory... Spiegleman has made judicious selections." -- Judith Kitchen, Georgia Review

"What a fine book Willard Spiegelman has given readers, a book that will make people read Amy Clampitt's poetry and appreciate the poetry of her life." -- Sam Pickering, Kenyon Review

Review

"Like the steam locomotive in its time, the age of letter writing may be passing. How fortunate, then, to hear from Amy Clampitt! The letters of good poets have a special interest, and hers are remarkably vivid. It is impossible to predict where her attention will alight next -- a chickadee, the Unicorn tapestry, the workings of grace, a bowl of raspberries, the economy of love and solitude, a Bach fugue -- each and everything described with a passionate curiosity, a palpable sympathy, and a shining moral poise. In the half-century of letters collected here, Clampitt offers us a whole world recreated in a poet's extraordinary sensibility and style. This book is a treasure." -- J. D. McClatchy

Customer Reviews

The Delight of a New Friend
Aside from the pleasure this excellent collection of her letters will bring to fans of Amy Clampitt's poetry, real delight is in store for any reader who loves books and taking life seriously but not grimly. Amy Clampitt came late to being recognized as a poet but she always had the integrity of an artist. Unusually modest, unusually interested in the world outside her self, her correspondence tells the classic American story of a bright young woman from the Midwest who moves to New York City. But instead of finding misery and disillusionment, Amy Clampitt found a rich life of the mind, new discoveries to make about the city and its inhabitants, and, at last, the genre she wrote best in and loved--poetry. She was given to finding happiness in her relationships and her work, and when acclaim and the acquaintance of the literary world came to her at the age of 63, she was both too old and too sensible to be anything but observant, grateful, and thrilled. She had lived in New York for years with the strategy that "underdressing" kept one comfortable. As a poet, as a woman, she was anything but underdressed--she was glorious--but in a world of peacocks, her lack of narcissism shines. At the end of the book, you feel as if you've lost a friend. The introduction by editor Willard Spiegelman is informative and graceful, and the selection of letters just right.

A Woman's Literary Life
Even people with no interest in poetry will be touched by the letters of Amy Clampitt, who lived in New York for forty years before she became an instant celebrity at 63 when Knopf published her first book of poems. Late bloomers: take heart. Clampitt was there before you. She worked as a literary editor and a librarian, and led a quiet, humble, thoughtful life. Her letters are marvels of energy and observation. As a Quaker, she participated in political activism in the 60s, and had a strong sense of social obligation. In addition, she wrote (both prose and poetry) like an angel.