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Incarnation & Metamorphosis: Can Literature Change Us?
"Witty and heartfelt essays, shaken and stirred."
— Kirkus Reviews
"Mason’s sharp interpretations make a persuasive case that great literature’s complexity and ambiguity can, at its best, produce empathy and understanding in readers. Book lovers will find much to ponder.”
— Publishers Weekly
" David Mason believes in literature as a weather event—even an extreme one. He reads to be changed—drenched, burned, blown away. He has no wish to have his standing position confirmed, and is alert to the ways in which his subjects are changed, both by their writing and its reception. These essays move comfortably from the lines of a Nobel Prize-winning poet to the dwelling of a Greek peasant who could have stepped out of Homer, on to the perils of literary biography. Mason is a reader as much as he is a writer. He looks into the political in order to find the personal—not the other way round. Incarnation & Metamorphosis is engaging all the way through, not least when Mason acts on the assumption, 'The imagination is free.'”
—James Campbell, author of Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin
“Literary criticism,” David Mason writes, “ought to entertain as well as illuminate.” In these essays Mason tells stories about embodiment and change, incarnation and metamorphosis, drawing connections between art and life without confusing the two. Mason considers the many kinds of change we encounter in our lives, our desire for justice, and the ways great writers complicate that desire. He discusses the lives and works of writers like Montaigne, Diderot, and Neruda as well as his colorful father’s fascination with a fictional character. He takes up such contemporary figures as the daring Australian writer Helen Garner, the playwright Tom Stoppard, and the poet-critic Dana Gioia; has fresh things to say about the perils of fame in the careers of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney; and mourns the loss of poet Michael Donaghy.
Incarnation & Metamorphosis is a book about living with literature—Mason writes that literature “is telling us that we are seen, warts and all. Criticism, such as the essays in this book, is a way of seeing back.”
— Kirkus Reviews
"Mason’s sharp interpretations make a persuasive case that great literature’s complexity and ambiguity can, at its best, produce empathy and understanding in readers. Book lovers will find much to ponder.”
— Publishers Weekly
" David Mason believes in literature as a weather event—even an extreme one. He reads to be changed—drenched, burned, blown away. He has no wish to have his standing position confirmed, and is alert to the ways in which his subjects are changed, both by their writing and its reception. These essays move comfortably from the lines of a Nobel Prize-winning poet to the dwelling of a Greek peasant who could have stepped out of Homer, on to the perils of literary biography. Mason is a reader as much as he is a writer. He looks into the political in order to find the personal—not the other way round. Incarnation & Metamorphosis is engaging all the way through, not least when Mason acts on the assumption, 'The imagination is free.'”
—James Campbell, author of Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin
“Literary criticism,” David Mason writes, “ought to entertain as well as illuminate.” In these essays Mason tells stories about embodiment and change, incarnation and metamorphosis, drawing connections between art and life without confusing the two. Mason considers the many kinds of change we encounter in our lives, our desire for justice, and the ways great writers complicate that desire. He discusses the lives and works of writers like Montaigne, Diderot, and Neruda as well as his colorful father’s fascination with a fictional character. He takes up such contemporary figures as the daring Australian writer Helen Garner, the playwright Tom Stoppard, and the poet-critic Dana Gioia; has fresh things to say about the perils of fame in the careers of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney; and mourns the loss of poet Michael Donaghy.
Incarnation & Metamorphosis is a book about living with literature—Mason writes that literature “is telling us that we are seen, warts and all. Criticism, such as the essays in this book, is a way of seeing back.”
226 pages, Paperback
Published March 7, 2023
2 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
David Mason
244 books17 followersLibrarian Note:
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 6, 2024
David Mason, the widely read (and widely travelled) former poet laureate of Colorado is back with another collection of essays. And like his previous books of nonfiction and literary criticism, there are many deeply engaging reflections here seasoned by Mason's cultural humility, broad humanism, and his abiding faith in the power of literature to complicate and enrich our sometimes fiercely held certainties. While broadly ecumenical in his appreciation for different types of poetry, Mason pushes back against the current and long-standing domination of free verse orthodoxy in the academy and elsewhere, writing:
"I continually meet people, including poets, who misunderstand the freedom of the verbal arts, assuming that constraints such as rhyme prevent us from saying what we 'really mean.' Yes, I answer, and thank God they do. What we MEAN, what we INTEND, locks us into an egocentric room; it's a poor substitute for the multiple windows offered by language itself."
Mason is above all a lover of language, whether it is poetry, novels, or journalism. And these essays are essentially love letters to the miracle of language....to a thing being being well thought out, well said, and well written. In a climate that often values and rewards performative self-righteousness, empty sloganeering and simplistic convictions, Mason reminds us that: "in literature, meaning is rarely one thing; instead it is a field of possibilities. I'm not saying a poem means anything you want it to, but if it's a good poem the meanings multiply."
"I continually meet people, including poets, who misunderstand the freedom of the verbal arts, assuming that constraints such as rhyme prevent us from saying what we 'really mean.' Yes, I answer, and thank God they do. What we MEAN, what we INTEND, locks us into an egocentric room; it's a poor substitute for the multiple windows offered by language itself."
Mason is above all a lover of language, whether it is poetry, novels, or journalism. And these essays are essentially love letters to the miracle of language....to a thing being being well thought out, well said, and well written. In a climate that often values and rewards performative self-righteousness, empty sloganeering and simplistic convictions, Mason reminds us that: "in literature, meaning is rarely one thing; instead it is a field of possibilities. I'm not saying a poem means anything you want it to, but if it's a good poem the meanings multiply."
March 16, 2023
Poets, their Lives and Words
David Mason gathers together some of his essays on poetry, on the poets - tracing their linkages, influences, friendships and creative impulses - and the ways in which we are ourselves changed by the interaction with the poetry, with the ideas and emotions presented. Poets I have not heard of but who are clearly important - and others I know, of course - and the conversations they all appear to be having - or not having - with each other - over the the recent centuries - is all stimulated through the beautifully moderated and poetic presentation from David Mason.
David Mason gathers together some of his essays on poetry, on the poets - tracing their linkages, influences, friendships and creative impulses - and the ways in which we are ourselves changed by the interaction with the poetry, with the ideas and emotions presented. Poets I have not heard of but who are clearly important - and others I know, of course - and the conversations they all appear to be having - or not having - with each other - over the the recent centuries - is all stimulated through the beautifully moderated and poetic presentation from David Mason.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews