Sleeping It Off in Rapid City

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Description

The first broad retrospective of August Kleinzahler's career, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City gathers poems from his major works along with a rich portion of new poems that visit different voice registers, experiment with form and length, and confirm Kleinzahler as among the most inventive and brilliant poets of our time.

Travel - actual and imaginary - remains a passion and inspiration, and in these pages the poet also finds 'This sanctified ground / Here, yes, here / The dead solid center of the universe / At the heart of the heart of America.'

Reviews

Praise for August Kleinzahler: "[Kleinzahler's] scope is large, his diction wildly exact, his line inventive, his means varied, and he never condescends." --Maureen N. McLane, "The New York Times Book Review""" "Erudite, restless, intellectually curious, alert to what goes on around him from the moment he opens his eyes in the morning, [Kleinzahler] brings to mind Frank O'Hara . . . Wonderful." --Charles Simic, "The New York Review of Books""" "Kleinzahler mixes the pungent and the delicate, the literary and the colloquial, to create a fine, technicolor-like excess." --John Palattella, "The Los Angeles Times""Kleinzahler is perhaps America's most linguistically gifted poet . . . Exquisitely fresh." --John Freeman, "San Francisco Chronicle"

"[Kleinzahler] is, first and last, a craftsman, a maker of lines . . . He never says more than he should . . . and keeps his focus not on the man who speaks the poems . . . but on what that man sees and on what he can hear."--Stephen Burt, "The New

Praise for August Kleinzahler: "[Kleinzahler's] scope is large, his diction wildly exact, his line inventive, his means varied, and he never condescends." --Maureen N. McLane, "The New York Times Book Review""""Erudite, restless, intellectually curious, alert to what goes on around him from the moment he opens his eyes in the morning, [Kleinzahler] brings to mind Frank O'Hara . . . Wonderful." --Charles Simic, "The New York Review of Books""""Kleinzahler mixes the pungent and the delicate, the literary and the colloquial, to create a fine, technicolor-like excess." --John Palattella, "The Los Angeles Times"Kleinzahler is perhaps Americas most linguistically gifted poet . . . Exquisitely fresh. John Freeman, "San Francisco Chronicle"

[Kleinzahler] is, first and last, a craftsman, a maker of lines . . . He never says more than he should . . . and keeps his focus not on the man who speaks the poems . . . but on what that man sees and

Author Bio

August Kleinzahler was born in Jersey City in 1949. He is the author of many books of poems and a prose memoir, Cutty, One Rock. The Strange Hours Travelers Keep won the International Griffin Poetry Prize (2004), Sleeping It Off in Rapid City the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in San Francisco.