March 16, 2024
Hometown launch of Bruce Whiteman’s Work to Be Done, featuring Justin Million! With books for sale by Take Cover Books, the evening will include a conversation, reading, and q&a!
About the book:
Drawn from a body of essays and reviews written over the course of nearly fifty years, Work to Be Done showcases both the depth and breadth of Bruce Whiteman’s critical work. Widely published across Canada and the United States, Whiteman is an accomplished poet, translator, and scholar, and his broad interests have never been limited to any one subject area. He moves between classical and contemporary literature, and music, book and literary history, shifting seamlessly from the close reading of a poem to the consideration of the life and oeuvre of an artist.
In these thirty-four selected essays, Whiteman demonstrates the cohesion of his varied body of work, which ranges from essays on such poets as Sappho, Goethe, Samuel Beckett, P.K. Page, Leonard Cohen and Philip Larkin, to insightful readings of the biographers and translators of such great writers as Ezra Pound and Marcel Proust. Work to Be Done is an erudite and eclectic tour of Whiteman’s finest critical investigations
From the Biblioasis website:
Drawn from a body of essays and reviews written over the course of nearly fifty years, Work to Be Done showcases both the depth and breadth of Bruce Whiteman’s critical work. Widely published across Canada and the United States, Whiteman is an accomplished poet, translator, and scholar, and his broad interests have never been limited to any one subject area. He moves between classical and contemporary literature, and music, book and literary history, shifting seamlessly from the close reading of a poem to the consideration of the life and oeuvre of an artist. In thirty-four selected essays, Whiteman demonstrates the cohesion of his varied body of work, which ranges from essays on such poets as Sappho, Goethe, Samuel Beckett, P.K. Page, Leonard Cohen and Philip Larkin, to insightful readings of the biographers and translators of such great writers as Ezra Pound and Marcel Proust. Work to Be Done is an erudite and eclectic tour of Whiteman’s finest critical investigations.
Praise for Work to Be Done
“Whiteman has been writing about poetry both internationally and nationally (including for the Star) for 50 years; this collection brings together a selection from the now Peterborough, Ont., resident, ranging from North American poetry to European literary history.”
—Deborah Dundas, Toronto Star
“Whether it’s the challenges of translating Sappho’s poetry, an evaluation of the life and legacy of iconic figures like Goethe, Beethoven and Flaubert, or the wanting verse of Leonard Cohen, Bruce Whiteman brings not just aesthetic insight but a deep humanism to every subject he writes about. Whiteman is that increasingly rare breed: the well-read critic who brings to the page the deeply considered opinion, rather than the knee-jerk take. Each of these essays and reviews, intelligent but never pretentious, sparkles with the pleasure of revelation.”
—Emily Donaldson
Praise for Bruce Whiteman
“Whiteman engages subject and readers with the phenomenology of existence—specifically, with landscape, music, and love … Arresting moments arrive frequently via imagery, then follow with insight … Whiteman is aware that the very nature of art is to elicit a reaction, and more importantly to have that reaction be expansive rather than diminishing.”
—Quill & Quire
