Tipping Point (20th Anniversary Edition)

Poetry. Introduction by Nick Flynn. With his deft and timeless blend of the lyrical and narrative, Fred Marchant explores the wars inside us and the ones we wage in the world: spiritual, familial, political.

"In the spirit of Wilfred Owen, TIPPING POINT is a book seared by personal and historical fact. Many artists are eager to assume the mantle of 'witness,' as if will or ambition could do the work of experience and imagination. In contrast, the gravity, modesty, and moral questioning in Marchant's poems reveal a mind committed to a version of history that is resolutely human scale."—Tom Sleigh

"Explicit in its detailing, subtly graded in its responsiveness, TIPPING POINT is also a kind of latter-day metaphysics of morals. Marchant searches out the hidden springs of action and yet never loses sight of the larger contexts in which our deeds and gestures come to matter. An honest, earned book."—Sven Birkerts

Fred Marchant is a Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston, where he is the founding director of the Creative Writing Program and the Poetry Center. In 1970, he became one of the first officers of the US Marine Corps to be honorably discharged as a conscientious objector in the Vietnam war, and his book TIPPING POINT (The Word Works 1993 and 2013) springs from his experiences during that time. His other books include Full Moon Boat (Graywolf Press, 2000), The Looking House (Graywolf Press, 2009), and House on Water, House in Air (The Dedalus Press, 2002).