Author Description

Poetry. Robert Dana's WHAT I THINK I KNOW is the fruit of a lifetime's quiet dedication to the art of poetry. These rigorously clear and deeply felt poems repay the closest reading. My hope is that this selection-chosen from over three decades of writing-will bring a host of new readers to a poet whose fullness of vision and strangely inward music represent, in fact, the true voice of poetry itself-Jay Parini. WHAT I THINK I KNOW is a lush and sensual re-evaluation of the world of objects-Today, everything takes/ the color of the sun. The air/ is filed and fine with it;/ the dead leaves, lumped/ and molten; flattened grass/ taking it like platinum (At the Vietnam War Memorial, Washington, D.C.)-validated throughout by a constant incarnation of the divine in the everyday. Dana was born in Boston in 1929, and has lived in Iowa for many years, where he is poet-in-residence at Cornell College.