You Never Know

Ron Padgett’s playful, nonchalant poetry is all delightful circumstance without the pomp.

Ron Padgett’s playful work is all circumstance without the pomp. You Never Know captures the joy and curiosity of a writer whose easy, nonchalant style displays the unfeigned fascination of the forever young. Padgett peers under rocks, skips over fences, and scans the sky to lend a capricious view to puckish poems that breathe with celebration.

Ron Padgett grew up in Tulsa and has lived mostly in New York City since 1960. Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Padgett’s How Long was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his Collected Poems won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Los Angeles Times Prize for the best poetry book of 2013. In addition to being a poet, he is also the translator of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, and Blaise Cendrars. His own work has been translated into eighteen languages.