Synopsis
John Godfrey's masterful body of work has sustained its attentive, lovesick, unruly energy for over fifty years. The City Keeps brings together the best poems from his thirteen collections, plus some previously uncollected. "Dedicated to those who people the City of New York," Godfrey's work is populated, elusive, and geometric, but also full of tenderness and light.
With an enemy
like daylight who needs
the psychology dime
Hips do the work
and I cross the world
John Godfrey was born in Massena, N.Y. in 1945. He received an A.B. from Princeton University in 1967, and took a B.S. in Nursing from Columbia University in 1994. He has received fellowships from the General Electric Foundation (1984), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2009), and the Z Foundation (2013). He retired in 2011 after 17 years as a nurse clinician in HIV/AIDS. He has lived in the East Village of Manhattan since the 1960s.
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About the Author
John Godfrey was born in Massena, N.Y. in 1945. He received an A.B. from Princeton University in 1967, and took a B.S. in Nursing from Columbia University in 1994. He has received fellowships from the General Electric Foundation (1984), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2009), and the Z Foundation (2013). He retired in 2011 after 17 years as a nurse clinician in HIV/AIDS. He has lived in the East Village of Manhattan since the 1960s.
Reviews
Though there are various ways to sum up a career, Godfrey (Tiny Gold Dress) and Wave have wisely taken the greatest hits route with this thorough and emotionally stirring volume. The book starts with a dedication to the people of New York City, and the poems emphasize Godfrey's writing as a sort of sonic cityscape. The city suffuses the air with "the power and felicity of pronouns," yet Godfrey's speakers are never quite identifiable and largely remain ungendered. The blur of genderqueerness is a revelation, considering that some of these poems are decades old. The lack of a gendered speaker allows Godfrey's language to move to the front of the work. His writing moves into surrealism at times, where the "material world/ is constantly crumbling." Despite this, the images and logical leaps house moments that reveal the heart of humanity. This is where the dedication to New Yorkers makes perfect sense; the cacophony of urbanism masks the quiet street-level personal. Godfrey's poems don't evolve much across the volume's 50-year span, but through his idiosyncratic surrealism readers may both see the "flower bending/ from momentum of light" and feel that living in modern America is "to be felt by nothing." (May)\n
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The City Keeps: Selected and New Poems 1966-2014
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