Book description
Selected Poems brings together poetry from A. E. Stallings's four acclaimed collections, Archaic Smile, Hapax, Olives, and Like, as well as a lagniappe of outlier poems. Over time, themes and characters reappear, speaking to one another across years and experience, creating a complex music of harmony, dissonance, and counterpoint. The…
Why read it?
1 author picked This Afterlife as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Is Stallings, an American who lives in Greece, the best poet now writing in English? I think she may be.
This new collection reprints poems from her previous slim volumes. Her verse is often about quotidian and domestic life, and she combines wit with depth. Her craftsmanship is superb, with brilliantly agile use of language, and she is the most interesting rhymer since Louis MacNeice. She also draws sometimes on Greek mythology.
Friends reading her for the first time have told me how astonished they are that they hadn’t heard of her. Hers is a unique voice, and a compelling…
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