The Man in the Wall – Poems by James Laughlin: 0759 (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Laughlin, J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811212378 ISBN 13: 9780811212373

Publisher: New Directions, 1993

Synopsis

James Laughlin has been called the American Catullus. Like that most Greek of ancient Latin poets, he elevates his everyday subjects with wit and clarity of language. Love and hate, death and aging, politics, literature, travel, the horrors of war - Laughlin's muse speaks of all these things with a fresh directness that makes his poems both timeless and contemporary. The founder of New Directions, Laughlin's efforts as publisher and poet have been to prolong and extend the old poetic traditions. Poetry for him is, in Gertrude Stein's phrase, a "continuous present" in all times and cultures. Laughlin developed his distinctive tight metrics with the advice of William Carlos Williams. A longer, comical line is found in the recent poems of Laughlin's doppelganger, Hiram Handspring. The Man in the Wall follows Laughlin's recent Collected Poems (Moyer Bell Limited).

About this title

From the Back Cover

James Laughlin has been called the American Catullus. Like that most Greek of ancient Latin poets, he elevates his everyday subjects with wit and clarity of language. Love and hate, death and aging, politics, literature, travel, the horrors or war-- Laughlin's muse speaks of all these things with a fresh directness that makes his poems both timeless and contemporary.

About the Author

James Laughlin (1914-1997) founded New Directions in 1936 while still a student at Harvard. He wrote and compiled more than a dozen books of poetry as well as stories and essays; seven volumes of his correspondence with his authors are available from W.W. Norton.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0811212378
• ISBN 13: 9780811212373
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 118