Five Seasons of Obsession: New and Selected Poems

Coming nearly 30 years after Ned O'Gorman's last major collection of poems, "Five Seasons of Obsession" marks the reemergence of an important and distinctive voice in American poetry. With the selection of his first collection of poems as the winner of the 1958 Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize, a distinguished panel of judges heralded "a new talent of the first magnitude." The "lyric power, intensity of feeling, fine intelligence" those judges singled out for praise, the "mastery of language and...joyous vitality in the use of it" continue to be hallmarks of Ned O'Gorman's poetry, and are found in abundance in this collection of new and selected poems.

"Ned O'Gorman is a truly original poet, whose "New and Selected" is full of continuing brio and surprise. There is an excellent variety here: O'Gorman can be lyrically comic, as in "Webbed, Yellow-Billed, and Aquamarine," can draw a clear and searing portrait in "To the Memory of Lydia Hoffman," or write with a compelling, runaway mysteriousness in such a poem as "The Eyes of Shetland Ponies." The newer poems in this fine book balance between the strongly sensual and a vision that knows "we are never finished with unknowing."--Richard Wilbur

"A poet of the nature and the body, some of the most beautiful, intelligent poems about love and its loss"--Flannery O'Connor
Introduction by Ned Rorem.
6 x 9 in.

Ned O'Gorman, the founder and head of The Children's Storefront School in Harlem, has published six volumes of poetry, three non fiction books, and one piece of children's literature. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, won the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets, and been granted the Rothko Chapel Award for Commitment to Truth and Freedom. His work has appeared in such places as "The Paris Review", "The New Yorker", "Harper's Bazaar", and the "Partisan Review". In 1998 he founded the Ricardo O'Gorman Library in Harlem, which he continues to direct.