EVERYTHING AND OTHER POEMS by Charles North
140 x 190mm, 90 pages, black and white printing, perfect bound, softcover, 2021
Charles North is the quintessential poet's poet. James Schuyler confidently named him "the most stimulating poet of his generation," while Harry Mathews possibly took it one step further to claim that Charles "belongs on the summit of our American Parnassus." To say that Charles North is a cornerstone in the home of contemporary American poetry would not be an exaggeration.
In Everything and Other Poems, his twelfth collection, the trademarks of North's poetry shine with an earnestness, ambition, intellect, and his modest sense of humor, capturing the many-faceted lives we lead. For example, in the 26-page title poem "Everything," we watch as the poet's mind, like a river, flows past, around, and lifts up the detritus of his imagination: books, movies, paintings, cartoons, animals, the silent letter "e," death, the moon, the weather, the rhythms, sounds, questions and textures of life itself. Prose poems, long-form poems, studies for poems, lists, plus a game of cat and mouse with some French Symbolists, North is at the top of his game in this collection. If anything, with a career spanning over 40 years, this book proves North to be the poet of, well, everything.
Charles North has published eleven books of poems, three books of critical prose, and collaborations with artists and other poets. With James Schuyler, he edited the poet/painter anthologies Broadway and Broadway 2 (Hanging Loose Press, 1989). His What It is Like: New and Selected Poems (Hanging Loose Press, 2011) headed NPR's Best Poetry Books of 2011, and he has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, two NEA grants, four Fund for Poetry Awards, and a Poets Foundation Award. He lives with his wife, the painter Paula North, in New York City.
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