Imagining Paradise: New and Selected Poems

(Hardback)

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At once erudite and plainspoken, imaginative and grounded in the grittily lunatic fundamentals of the human heart, here is the author's definitive selection of his verse: the writings of an underground poet who lasted. These poems describe a universe that is as populous and diverse as it is ephemeral and evanescent. Born of the world and of books and art in equal measure, they tell of the unyielding granite truths of people's roller-coaster lives. And there's always a poet looking back, facing life and death and everything inbetween...

Reviews

Barry Gifford's pure lyrical self shines in these poems. Andrei Codrescu

At his best, Gifford recalls William Carlos Williams: particular, lyrical but laconic, compassionate but unsentimental. Publishers Weekly

These poems are like zen dominoes: no matter how shuffled, they always seem to come out right. Booklist

Author Bio

The author of more than forty works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into over twenty-five languages,BARRY GIFFORDwrites distinctly American stories for readers around the globe. From screenplays and librettos to his acclaimed Sailor and Lula novels, Giffords writing is as distinctive as it is difficult to classify. Born in the Seneca Hotel on Chicagos Near North Side, he relocated in his adolescence to New Orleans. The move proved significant: throughout his career, Giffords fictionpart-noir, part-picaresque, always entertainingis born of the clash between what he has referred to as his Northern Side and Southern Side. Gifford has been recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novelWild at Heartwas adapted into the 1990 Palme dOr-winning film of the same name. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.