The Courtesy

Product Description In this, his first book, Alan Shapiro vividly recreates some of the more memorable and poignant moments from his Jewish-American childhood, and in the process reveals his compassionate interest in the forgotten, the alienated, and the infirm. The Courtesy is an intelligent, reflective examination of the poet's own psychological history. "The Courtesy is really an admirable book: it shows up the unreality of a lot of the other poetry one reads, dealing honestly and with that perversity which is a sign of thoughfulness, with the slight but heavy matter of our everyday defeats."—Michael Hoffman, Poetry Nation Review About the Author Alan Shapiro has written many books of poetry and prose, most recently Against Translation, That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration, and Reel to Reel, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Shapiro  has won the Kingsley Tufts Award,   the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and an  American Academy of Arts and Letters literature award, among others, and has received fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his dog, Sammy.