This Much I Can Tell You

Poetry. "Another name for this book could be The Museum of Life As We Know It Today. From public figures like Mishima and Nixon, from musicians like Frankie Avalon and Roy Orbison, as well as the Cure and the Everly Brothers, Rigsbee walks us through our past and present even as he points us toward the future. The world that awaits will be a beautiful one as long as it contains poets and poems like these."—David Kirby

"For decades now, David Rigsbee has crafted poems of a bracing lyrical intensity that is both refined and tough-minded. His new collection shows him working at the height of his considerable powers: these are poems of heartfelt retrospection and surprising associations. Above all, they celebrate the blessings and consolations of a cultured life, one that can honor Auden and Roy Orbison, Faust and one-hit Doo Wop groups. These elegant and lovingly constructed poems deserve to be read and—more importantly—reread." —David Wojahn

David Rigsbee is the author of NOT ALONE IN MY DANCING: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS (2015), SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS (2012) and THE PILOT HOUSE (2011), from Black Lawrence Press, and The Red Tower: New and Selected Poems (NewSouth Books, 2010). He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Literature and fellowships from The Djerassi Foundation, The Virginia Commission on the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is the author of critical studies of Carolyn Kizer and Joseph Brodsky and has coedited Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Southern Poetry. He is contributing editor of The Cortland Review and lives in Hudson, New York.