Bøker utgitt av Black Spruce Press

This latest book by Jonas Zdanys continues his multi-volume exploration of some potentials of the lyrical-narrative voice in poetry. This volume probes the epiphanic moments revealed by the lyrical voice and the human stories celebrated by the narrative impulse, both within and surrounding moments of immediate insight. The poems in this collection reflect those dual patterns, often taking the reader beyond set expectations and moving to more chaotic frameworks made possible by surrealist and magical realist perspectives. In doing so, Zdanys continues to present the world as an unbound frame where all things can be imagined and where human experience is not limited merely to the familiar. That has been an organizing thematic principle of several of his earlier books. It finds particular reaffirmation in this volume, which speaks through vivid imagery and textured language to present the contours of the immediate world lit by the poetic imagination and what it may mean to be human in it. "Zdanys is as close to consistently revealing luminosity as anyone." World Literature Today

In A World Once Known Al Zolynas observes, responds to, and even celebrates the details of ordinary daily life. Whether sitting outside a café, remembering a boyhood incident, interacting with an insect, speculating about Shakespeare's Hamlet, or musing about writing and philosophy, the poems essentially celebrate the sheer wonder of existence, the mystery of being. No complexifying modernist poet, Zolynas opts for a shameless accessibility in his art. Perhaps that's why Allen Ginsberg found Zolynas' earlier volume, Under Ideal Conditions, "immediately clear and lucid," and why Czeslaw Milosz praised him for his "clear and precise poems" and for his unmistakable individual voice.

The collection is big in breadth, big in length, big in scope; it's also big in heart and soul, big in humor and wisdom. Reading these dazzling poems, you'll hear echoes from near and far, from the distant past, the relatively recent past, and the present. The great and vaunted poets of the West show up from time to time in these pages as references, allusions, influences, sometimes as visiting characters, even as friends of the poet. Likewise, the literatures of the East make frequent allusive appearances: from the canon of the Indian subcontinent to-especially-the old Chinese poets Li Bo, Du Fu, and Han Shan (Cold Mountain). With phrasing like this, Kerry Shawn Keys establishes himself as one of the finest lyrical poets of our era:all is forgotten,and I am left at a loss, except for the crystal clearBig Dipper which over and over again, leisurelyand benevolently quenches my unquenchable thirst."