Clear and insightful poetry on our relationship to the given world.
JAMES TATE grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He is the author of The Lost Pilot (1967), The Oblivion Ha-Ha (1970), Hints to Pilgrims (1971), Absences (1972), Viper Jazz (1976), Riven Doggeries (1979), Constant Defenders (1983), and Reckoner (1986). He teaches at the University of Massachusetts and lives in Amherst.
"Mr. Tate is an elegant and anarchic clown. A lord of poetic misrule with a serious, subversive purpose."--John Ash, New York Times Book Review
"Mr. Tate is an elegant and anarchic clown. A lord of poetic misrule with a serious, subversive purpose."--John Ash, New York Times Book Review
"Tate brings to his work an extravagantly surrealistic imagination and a willingness to let his words take him where they will. Nonchalant in the midst of radical uncertainty, he handles bizarre details as though they were commonplace facts. [Tate's poetry draws upon] so rich a fund of comic energy that is may well prove an antidote to the anxiety some readers feel with poems that refuse to lend themselves to instant analysis."--David Lehman, Washington Post Book World
"American poetry, in desperate need of real vision, is being finally rewarded with the genuine article . . . No one else seems to be living as deeply as this man--or seeing as clearly. Or singing as terrifying a song"--Jorie Graham