Customer Reviews

Habitat: New And Selected Poems, 1965-2005

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We are blessed on Cape Cod with a disproportionate number of truly great artists, and Brendan Galvin is as good as it gets, even in such heady company as Robert Pinsky, Alan Dugan, Mary Olver, Mark Doty, Keith Althaus, Stanley Kunitz, Gail Mazur -- on and on it goes. All of them live on the Cape off and on during the year, and Galvin is a year rounder. As a naturalist poet, Galvin's observations always seem newly turned. No matter how many times you read verse about a dune, a coyote, or a gold sweep of marsh grass, Galvin makes it seem different. And his sense of humor is, at times, wildly funny. Perhaps it's something about the water in Truro because the late Alan Dugan had that sense of humor that would just stop you in your tracks. Galvin was a finalist for the National Book Award this year for "Habitat," and it's a wonderful retrospective of his work, along with his newest efforts. If you aren't familiar with Galvin's work, do yourself a favor and spring for the price of this book. It's almost as good as a trip to Cape Cod itself and, when you consider who your guide is, perhaps even better.