Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt

"With the publication of her first book of poems, at the age of sixty-three, Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame, launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight, and living a whirlwind eleven years until her death in 1994. Here we have the first full-length study of this patron saint of late bloomers-of her poetry, and of the lifetime it took her to find the true form for her words. "For the ocean, nothing / is beneath consideration," Clampitt writes in her canonical poem "Beach Glass"-neither is it for her biographer, the renowned poetry scholar Willard Spiegelman, who in this Iowan Quaker, born to a family of farmers in 1920, discovers a woman of dazzling intellect, staunch progressive politics, and an inexhaustible sense of wonder for the world and the words we've invented to describe it. Giving equal weight to the life and the poetry, Spiegelman untangles Clampitt's famously allusive lines to reveal the experiences they emerged from, pulling the curtain back on her nearly four decades of artistic anonymity, and in doing so assembling a rich period piece of Manhattan during the days in which Clampitt worked for Oxford University Press and the National Audubon Society-writing cheery, discursive office memos,and two novels that no one would publish, before finding her stride in verse. Nothing Stays Put is a gift to poetry fans, an inspiration to artists striving at any age, and an ode to this most unlikely of literary celebrities, who would publish five acclaimed books and win a MacArthur "Genius Grant" nearly all in the final decade of her life"--
Pulling back the curtain on her nearly four decades of artistic anonymity, a renowned poetry scholar delves into the papers and poems of the beloved and acclaimed poet Amy Clampitt, who, at the age of 63, rose to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight. 25,000 first printing. Illustrations.
An evocative portrait of the beloved and acclaimed poet, whose late-in-life success took the literary world by storm.“Clampitt comes to life here...Spiegelman’s Nothing Stays Put embodies a different kind of investigation, not surveillance but a thoughtful examination that at times still spins off into a kind of awe.” —The Washington PostWith the publication of her first book of poems in her sixty-third year, Amy Clampitt rose meteorically to fame, launching herself from obscurity to the upper ranks of American poetry all but overnight, and living a whirlwind eleven years, until her death in 1994. Years later, as renowned poetry scholar Willard Spiegelman wades into her papers and poems, he discovers a woman of dazzling intellect, staunch progressive politics, and an inexhaustible sense of wonder for the world and the words we’ve invented to describe it.Giving equal weight to the life and the poetry, Spiegelman untangles Clampitt’s famously allusive lines to reveal the experiences they emerged from, pulling the curtain back on her nearly four decades of artistic anonymity, and in doing so assembling a rich period piece of Manhattan during the days in which Clampitt worked for Oxford University Press and the National Audubon Society—writing cheery, discursive office memos, and two novels that never got published, before hitting her stride in verse.Nothing Stays Put is a gift to poetry fans, an inspiration to artists striving at any age, and an ode to this most unlikely of literary celebrities, who would publish five acclaimed books and win a MacArthur “Genius Grant” nearly all in the final decade of her life.