Author Description

Written over a twenty-year period and selected by the author, these poems are the indispensable record of wide-ranging explorations of experience and of language. Brought together, they draw in bold, clear lines the profile of a central figure in contemporary poetry. Alfred Corn draws with extraordinary skill on narrative, figurative, and metrical resources to frame challenging contemporary issues, autobiographical themes, and vivid observations of both the extraordinary and the everyday. Reflecting on subjects ranging from the comic to the classical, Corn's poetry is musical, meditative, passionate, and direct. These poems were gathered from six of Corn's previous collections: All Roads at Once (1976), A Call in the Midst of the Crowd (1978), The Various Light (1980), Notes from a Child of Paradise (1984), The West Door (1988), and Autobiographies (1992).