The Virgin of Bennington (Nova Audio Books)

Norris, Kathleen

ISBN 10: 1587884232 ISBN 13: 9781587884238

Publisher: Brilliance Audio, 2001

Synopsis

The audiobook her devoted listeners have been waiting for. At last, New York Times betselling author Kathleen Norris’s first continuous narrative...a story of sex, drugs, and poetry.

After spending her high school years in Hawaii, Kathleen Norris was woefully unprepared for Bennington College in the 1960s, with its culture of drugs, sex, and bohemianism. But it was also at Bennington that she discovered her great love of poetry, which carried her to New York City at a time when a new generation of poets was emerging and shaking up the establishment.

Working at the Academy of American Poets for her beloved mentor, Elizabeth Kray, and hanging out at clubs with Andy Warhol’s crowd at night, Norris found herself immersed in an exciting and emotionally turbulent new world. Her memoir of that time—of her friendships and encounters with poets, including Jim Carroll, Denise Levertov, Gerard Malanga, Erica Jong, James Merrill, Stanley Kunitz, and James Wright—is an inspiring tribute to poetry and a stunning evocation of time and place. Her tenuous balancing act on the bridge between naïve experimentation and indirection and the more focused responsibilities of adulthood, makes for a dramatic and illuminating account of coming-of-age at a tumultuous moment in our history.

“Through three bestselling books published over the past six years, Kathleen Norris has captured [readers’] hearts and fed their souls.” —Common Boundary

About this title

About the Author:

Kathleen Norris is the award-winning, bestselling author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; The Cloister Walk; and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, in various anthologies, and in her own three volumes of poetry. She divides her time between South Dakota and Hawaii.

From AudioFile:

It's a great title and, yes, Norris recreates college life in the '60s, but the bulk of this story takes place in New York, where the aspiring poet worked for Betty Kray at the Academy of American Poets. Part coming-of-age revelation and part tribute to Kray, this literate memoir is broken into non-chronological segments sometimes not well defined by Sandra Burr. The text provides few dynamics, so one can't expect fireworks in the reading, but Burr's voice is clear, and her tone earnest. It's almost as if Norris, who later wrote of monastic life, is getting this all off her chest. Burr brings out the author's spiritual side, as well as her near-veneration of Kray. This is a good look (or listen) at the poetry scene of the '70s. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1587884232
• ISBN 13: 9781587884238
• Binding: Audio Cassette