What I can't bear losing
Subtitle: notes from a life
By: Gerald Stern.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
Subjects: Stern, Gerald, 1925-; Poets, American -- 20th century -- Biography.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "In a series of freewheeling rambles that combine autobiography and meditation, Gerald Stern explores significant and representative events in his life. He describes the dour Sundays of Calvinist Pittsburgh, punctuated by his parents' weekly battles. We see glimpses of him as a wilderness camp counselor, and later, having been declared 4-F, as a postwar draftee (a stint that includes jail). In the 1950s he savors the romance of Paris. He also tells of being shot in Newark - the bullet is still in his neck to prove it. Other scenes include being mistaken for Allen Ginsberg and encounters with Andy Warhol.

And in the ineffably tender "The Ring," Stern recalls his mother's second engagement ring, "when they were a bit richer, if a bit broader and a bit more weary.""--Jacket.