Theory of Devolution: Poems (Signed First Edition)

GROFF, David

ISBN 10: 0252070860 / ISBN 13: 9780252070860

Published by University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, IL, 2002

About this Item

First edition. Softcover. 84 pages. Simultaneous paperback issue of this collection of pomes that was selected by Mark Doty as part of the National Poetry Series. A clean very near fine copy in wrappers. Signed and warmly inscribed by Groff on the title page to poet Marie Ponsot in the year of publication. Also includes a laid in signed card presenting this book to Ponsot as well. A very nice copy as the inscription and card alludes to the fact that Ponsot helped Groff and she is mentioned in the acknowledgments.

Seller Inventory # 169419

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Theory of Devolution: Poems (Signed First Edition)
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, IL
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252070860
• ISBN 13: 9780252070860
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

With blazing wit and a searing language, David Groff writes fiercely of erosion and endurance in this stunning debut collection. At turns fervent and elegiac, dishy and sly, these poems confront the effect of AIDS and HIV on a brotherhood that dealt firsthand with grief and loss and, later, the tenuous prospect of survival. Peopled with the spirits of dead gay men, uncertain lovers, mortal parents, and spectral friends and brothers, Groff's poems are unified by their preoccupation with what erodes us and what we can hold onto when life and love devolve.
 
Theory of Devolution is a book of balances: alternately passionate and restrained, headlong and meditative, engaged and knowingly detached. David Groff's territory is Chelsea and Fire Island, at the end of a nightmare crisis but nowhere near the end of an epidemic. How, in such times, to speak? These pages give voice to an ‘always-dying particular man,' examining the evidence of loss and pleasure and the deep bonds of affection in poems alive with ‘an odd crabbed pulse of beauty they refine to true detail.'" –- Mark Doty
 
"David Groff's poems open our attention by a subtle, unflinching love of human being. The live, known past spins sharp and fine in and out of the now of his vision. His language exhilarates." –- Marie Ponsot
 

About the Author

David Groff is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the" Men On Men 2" and "Men on Men 2000" fiction anthologies, as well as "OUT "magazine, New York magazine, "POZ", and other periodicals. He lives in New York City.