{"product_id":"9781619029934","title":"The Education of a Young Poet","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Biespiel’s supple memoir of becoming a poet will surely inspire other writers to embrace the bodily character of writing and feel the power and, sometimes, the emptiness of the act of writing poetry.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Education of a Young Poet\u003c\/i\u003e is David Biespiel’s moving account of his awakening to writing and the language that can shape a life. Exploring the original source of his creative impulse—a great-grandfather who traveled alone from Ukraine to America in 1910, eventually settling as a rag peddler in the tiny town of Elma, Iowa—through the generations that followed, Biespiel tracks his childhood in Texas and his university days in the northeast, led along by the \"pattern and random bursts that make up a life.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis book offers an intimate recollection of how one person forges a life as a writer during extraordinary times. From the Jewish quarter of Houston in the 1970s to bohemian Boston in the 1980s, from Russia’s Pale of Settlement to a farming village in Vermont, Biespiel remains alert to the magic of possibilities—ancestral journeys, hash parties, political rallies, family connections, uncertain loves, the thrill of sex, and lasting friendships. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer’s craft coupled with a classic coming-of-age tale that does for Boston in the 1980s what Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s and Broyard’s\u003cbr\u003eKafka Was the Rage did for Greenwich Village in the 1950s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRestless with curiosity and enthusiasm, \u003ci\u003eThe Education of a Young Poet\u003c\/i\u003e is a singular and universal bildungsroman that movingly demonstrates, \"in telling the story of one’s coming into consciousness, all languages are more or less the same.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Counterpoint Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47036726477040,"sku":"9781619029934","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781619029934_p0.jpg?v=1763853907","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781619029934","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}