Surfings: Selected Poems of Will Inman [Paperback]

David Ray (Editor), Michael Rattee (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2005

The first major & definitive collection of poems by the legendary Will Inman, featuring stunning selections from over forty years of his experiences and meditations ranging from the wildernesses of Arizona to his early days as a poet and activist in the tough Lower East Side of Manhattan, to his artistic and cultural roots in North Carolina. Nearly all these poems in this collection were published throughout several decades either in broadsides, or in Inman chapbooks. The book's cover features "Anticipation" by award-winning poet/artist David Chorlton. Will Inman's "Surfings" has been awarded the distinction of the year's "Best Selected Poems" by the Latitudes Foundation. Whether writing about the streets of Brooklyn or the deserts of Arizona, about human triumph or human suffering, Will Inman's reputation among other writers and critics--nationally and internationally--is formidable and historic.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a lifetime of compassionate social engagement; idiom, cadence, and image W.C. Williams would admire; in Whitman's grand tradition." -- Sam Hamill

"...his best book... plain-spoken narrative sequences reflect humane compassion for all, evoking honest spiritual dimensions in fresh, natural imagery." -- Winner of the 2005 Poetic Diversity Award; reviewed by Robert Bonazzi, San Antonio Express-News, March 12, 2006

"[poetry with] a passionate love of life and unrivaled originality... more powerfully expressed than anyone else's of his generation." -- Jimmy Santiago Baca

About the Author

Will Inman was born in 1923 in Wilmington, NC, and received his BA in 1943 from Duke University. For many years he was active in the labor union movement, the War Resisters League, and other activist groups. After many years on the East Coast, notably New York City, Inman moved to Tucson in 1973. His key issues are peace, justice, brotherhood, and freedom of every variety. His poetry brings together layers of the cosmic with a profound spiritual sense of place and being, in reminiscent echoes of Walt Whitman. His is a holy war that seeks to empower rather than destroy, to bring about emancipation from our shadow selves rather than deny the anger, rage and frustration locked within us, to give voice to the voiceless ones and to what may seem a voiceless world that is constantly under attack by industry, war, and politics. Not only has Will Inman distinguished himself as a poet of excellence, writing about subjects dear to the human heart in an elevated language that resonates profoundly and passionately with an uncommon depth of courage, but he is also simply a fine human being who recognizes the responsibility of each of us toward our community, toward our earth, and toward the members of all species who inhabit it.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Howling Dog Press (November 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882863690
• ISBN-13: 978-1882863693
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,611,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Surfings: Selected Poems of Will Inman is a significant achievement, December 7, 2006

By 

Burgess Needle (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Surfings: Selected Poems of Will Inman (Paperback)

David Ray and Michael Rattee have done the world an important service by judiciously winnowing Willl Inman's vast, deep and mighty oevre of poetry into this lightly held, yet weighty and significant collection. The last two lines of Inman's poem "Last Chant for Pablo Neruda" are, "O Yes, I laugh, my Brother, for all the junta fires / can only scorch your songs into our throats!" Here is the voice of the poet that speaks for himself and for all of us; whose laugh echoes Whitman's barbaric yelp and whose powerful lasso cinches metaphor with the roses and thorns of the natural world.
Will Inman wrote, "You have to find out what's known in you and what's known around you." His poems show he did that well
Whether his observations concern the environment (its beauty or our encroachment upon it) or the people who work the land and sea, Will Inman picks up the pulse of life around him and distills it into poetry. Describing the people who shell oysters ("Landscapes Live Within Us") he wrote: "The shellers/always had scarred hands, lined black with oyster/ mud, thumbs and knuckles often cracked from cold./They were always friendly and invariably thought/us townsfolk funny.../Now and then/an oyster gave up a knotty little pearl. And/tiny crabs, caught hiding in the shells, would/turn up in the bowls steaming orange like/sea flowers, reluctant before our ravening eyes. I treasured several of the pearls, trying not to/admit to myself how ugly they were, wondering even/if their original sandgrain might be a diamond."
Surfings: Selected Poems of Will Inman has pearls and diamonds on every page.