Description

Paul Dry Books, paperback

Publication Date: June 15, 2021

Publisher Marketing:From a Corfu classroom to an Accra art gallery to a spa in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, this collection of prose by poet Rachel Hadas ranges through space. It reaches back in time as Hadas recalls a 1950’s New York City childhood “saturated with books” and long-departed parents, both of whom were teachers and deeply scholarly in different ways. InPiece by Piece, Hadaswho has read and written and taught and lived a life surrounded by readers, writers, and teacherssifts through the texts and experiences of her bookish life to pass on her findings to new readers.

“Writing a book review,” she says in the foreword, “is only one way, and rarely the most interesting way, to engage with what one has read. I’m more interested in what happens to that book as time passes–the obliterations and transformations of memory. What and how do I recall what I’ve read, sometimes many years before? How, at different times in my life, did books help me?” Rich with a variety of connections in every essay or review,Piece by Pieceis about books and about paying attention. It’s about living.

“Rachel Hadas, one of our best poets, has once again proved herself a lively, indispensable essayist. She has spent a lifetime falling in love with books, and it shows. InPiece by Pieceshe ranges superbly from Kipling and Salinger to thirtysomething contemporary poets. Her personal essays, poignantly evoking parents and friends, are haunting and intensely memorable. Hadas is not just a wise critic, but a vigorous, highly enjoyable one too.”David Mikics, author ofSlow Reading in a Hurried AgeandThe Annotated Emerson