The Perfect Life: Lyric Essays

Poet and essayist Peter Stitt describes not a perfect life achieved, but his search for that unattainable ideal, writing of books he has loved and the often difficult lives of writers, including his teachers John Berryman and James Wright along with his lifelong literary companions Frost, Stevens, Austen, Dickinson, and Poe. Generous and alert in his fascinations, Stitt explores a quest for freedom among the Amish, the French partisans, and the "heretical" Cathars; considers divine interest in college basketball; and offers a fresh perspective on parenting, meditating on the life of an adopted stepdaughter.