The Education of a Young Poet

by David Biespiel

A beautifully rendered memoir about creative beginnings in the vein of Umberto Eco’s classic Confessions of a Young Novelist.


The Education of a Young Poet is David Biespiel’s moving account of his awakening to writing and the language that can shape a life. Impelled by the wonder and delight of creativity, and how the presence of books assists emotional development, Biespiel writes for every creative person who longs to shape the actions of their world into art and literature.

Exploring the original sources of his creative impulse—a great-grandfather who travelled 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.”

His book as well offers an intimate and intensely personal recollection of how one person forges a life of as a writer during extraordinary times. From the Jewish quarter of Houston in the 1970s to bohemian Boston in the 1980s, including treks through Iowa, Brooklyn, Nashville, and road trips across the U.S.; 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 Allston in Boston in the 1980s what Hemingway's A Moveable Feast did for Paris in the 1920s and Broyard’s Kafka was the Rage did for Greenwich Village in the 1950s.

Restless with curiosity and enthusiasm, The Education of a Young Poet 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.”

Genres: Poetry, Memoir

192 pages, Hardcover

Published October 10, 2017

About the author

David Biespiel was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1964, raised in Texas, and educated at Stanford University, University of Maryland, and Boston University.

One of the leading poets of his generation, he is the founder of the Attic Writers' Workshop in Portland, Oregon, editor of Poetry Northwest, poetry columnist for The Oregonian, and daily contributor on politics to The Politico."

Reviews

[Mike Zickar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't a book about how to become a poet, but the tale of the childhood and early adulthood of somebody who eventually did become a poet. Just a small portion of the book is about poetry and writing. The author focuses on his time as a competitive diver, stories of his ancestors migrating from Ukraine to Iowa and then Brooklyn, and time growing up in segregated Houston. I hope Biespiel continues this autobiographical journey with more volumes!

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author’s memoir of becoming a poet is beautifully written and reveals the start of a creative life.

[Anne, Unfinished Woman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of this memoir bored me cross-eyed, and read rather like a confessional of sex, drugs and Bob Dylan, with little relevancy to poetry. He goes on about his love for words and talks about the first poetry reading he attended, blah, blah, blah...the second one he attended and so on. But there is just too much detail about his athletic ability as a diver (though his description of his feelings when diving "entering the foreign language of the air" was lyrical), and attending baseball games and parties, and political rallies, ad naseum. He begins with the arrival of an ancestor in 1910 and he revisits that background over and over, and I found that confusing as he writes it as if he is there with the man, sleeping on the floor of a small room. There are some interesting memories, such as the experience with his coach/friend camping after deciding not discontinue diving, when they witness a movement of elk at night. And there are descriptions of writing, and his love of words and language that are eloquent. But much of time he sounds like he is on something. Overall I would opine that this was possible cathartic for him and not for this reader.

[Alicia Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir had me spellbound. The author shows us his education, yes, but more essential he illustrates what it takes to grow as an observer of the inner and outer world, to revel in its mysteries, to allow uncertainty and risk - all the essentials of the heart and spirit needed in order to enter into a poem. This memoir reinvigorated my love of reading and writing --- Some gems I highlighted:

"A writer is often trying to answer a dream like that, answer imagination, and to understand one’s self. But the images show you just enough of themselves to be close to you. And yet, they are not reachable. They show you just enough not to drown in them or be chased down."

"To write is to uncover, to recover, what the words are hiding."

"The immediate shapes of letters are like a thicket into a nearby wood."

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could have appreciated this work more—I feel like there were many levels I wasn't getting, over my head. Beautiful language; different tone from any other memoir I've read.

I think I was a bit impatient while reading, as I would find myself having to reread pages or paragraphs because I'd discover I hadn't been paying attention and wasn't sure what was going on. I think it's because there's much less "action," so to speak, and more picking apart the feelings and thoughts going on during a few specific moments of his younger life.

[Bridget Gallagher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cool book to read for young people who are trying to see the world through a more poetic lense. Some parts of the memoir were slow at parts, but amazing one-liners on the intersection of poetry and living life made it worth reading. Beispiel’s paragraph on what conversations in his college kitchen meant to him is very moving and is a universal experience that he explains in such an intimate way.

[Savannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Laurel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satisfying memoir. One that accurately reflected days of undergraduate gab as well as the intoxication of poetry.