What I Can't Bear Losing by Gerald Stern

Philip Levine recommends
What I Can't Bear Losing, a memoir by Gerald Stern: "This book would have been more accurately titled
What I Can't Lose, since it is made up of a series of essays that deal with the images and events that have haunted Stern all his life. As in his poems, Stern is by turns riotously funny and utterly serious. He has an amazingly supple prose style which manages to capture the same voice that has so thrillingly animated his poems. So much of a life is crowded into these pages that you finish feeling you've made a new friend forever, one you want to spend as much time as possible, one that can make you weep and laugh at the same time." (Norton)