Velocities: New and Selected Poems 1966-1992 (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Dobyns, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140586512 ISBN 13: 9780140586510

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1994

Synopsis

“Stephen Dobyns is one of the very finest poets writing in America today. His poems are brave, ravenous, intensely moving, and utterly his own.” –Thomas Lux

Velocities presents a selection of poems spanning more than twenty-five years in the career of Stephen Dobyns, one of the finest and most original poets of our age. This volume brings together new poems and a generous selection of work from Dobyns’s seven previously published collections.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Dobyns, author of eleven previous volumes of poetry and twenty novels, teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as numerous other awards.

From the Back Cover

Velocities presents a selection of poems spanning more than twenty-five years in the career of Stephen Dobyns, one of the finest and most original poets of our age. This volume brings together new poems and a generous selection of work from Dobyns's seven previously published collections.

Reviews

Dobyns is a restless and insistent writer, pounding out such novels as The Wrestler's Cruel Study and the Charlie Bradshaw detective series, all the while composing poetry of corporeal authority. Not to say that Dobyns is only a poet of the body, but a gritty physicality does, in fact, underlie all his poems, whether they're about death, love, hope, or stubborn what-the-hell lust. This volume gathers the best of eight books of poems as well as a selection of new, never-before-published works, and it takes us on a journey into territories both mythical and commonplace. Dobyns can write about Orpheus as convincingly as he can write about shaving, his baby daughter, or a vignette in a topless bar. Just as the title implies, there is a constant sense of motion and speed in Dobyns' poetry, an urgency, a longing for escape or release. He writes about angels and rats, sloth and bravado, the paintings of C{‚}ezanne and Balthus, kisses and cemeteries. If we were to choose one element to describe these poems, it would be water, which can move at many speeds and fill any space. Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0140586512
• ISBN 13: 9780140586510
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320