Selected Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series) [Paperback]

James Tate (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series | Publication Date: March 15, 1991

The Selected Poems James Tate's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection and his first British publication, gathers work from nine previous books, from the Lost Pilot which was a Yale Younger Poets selection in 1967, through his 1986 collection Reckoner. He is a most agile poet in a precarious world. Life is alarming and absurd, but properly considered that absurdity reveals, often with laughter, the something else by which we live. The poems are about our world, our wrecked, vexed love for it. Tate has been described as a surrealist. If that is what he is, his surrealism issues in a vision of a world delivered back to itself by his unillusioned subversion and candor.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A selection representative of 25 years of work and nine books, from Lost Pilot (1967) through Reckoner (1986), these poems showcase Tate's talent for surreal entertainment that reveals an underlying serious point. He writes: "I am surrounded by the pieces of this huge/puzzle: here's a piece I call my wife, and/ here's an odd one I call convictions, here's/ conventions, here's collisions, conflagrations . . . " In such high comedy Tate leaves lingering questions about the problems of existence, while leaving too a smile on the reader's face. The book won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Review

"...he has the rare ability to be very, very funny on the page..."--New York Times Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; 1st edition (March 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819511927
• ISBN-13: 978-0819511928
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hyperbole just isn't enough, September 14, 2005

By 

Greg Kessler (Athens, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

James Tate is THE visionary poet of our age and this is his most comprehensive collection to date.

I have read, reread and read again every piece of Tate's writing I have been able to find since I was first exposed to Tate in a class I took with Rodney Jones (another excellent poet) nearly twenty years ago.

Little can compare with:

The Lost Pilot
Coming Down Cleveland Avenue
F@ck the Astronauts

...except the rest of this selected edition which often makes me forget even these masterpieces.

I have gone through 3 copies of this selected edition as I took a copy of it with me everywhere for years.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tate is the best poet in America., August 29, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Selected Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

If you want to laugh, if you want to feel good about the human race, if you want something highly entertaining and intellectually satisfying to read (it is possible), then get this book. James Tate is just about the only poet ever who can write poetry that will actually make you physically laugh out loud. He is also the kind of poet that even people who hate poetry can like, just because he's so funny.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful collection, November 6, 2006

By 

Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I came across James Tate's poetry in an anthology of Prose Poems, and immediately fell in love with his style. That has spurred me on to get a representative collection of his writing, and by and large I have not been disappointed. This is a wonderful book, with some of the most imaginative use of images and language that I have come across. However, I believe that Tate's prose poems are superior to the rest of his writings, and would really like to read a collection of those. Overall, however, I do recommend this book to anyone interested in more modern poetry.