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Tom Pickard’s poems are by turns
erotic and political, pastoral and urban, and make use of everyday
speech with formal inventiveness and sophistication. Since High
On the Walls (1967), he has written six books of poetry, and this
career-spanning volume is his first in America.
“Young Tom Pickard for years ran the Morden Tower readings
in Newcastle, Great Britain, and from early 1960s on was chief friend,
host & proponent of new-wave American poetics . . . I am an
old admirer of his poetry and believe he’s one of the livest
truest poets of Great Britain. Under
guidance from his friend the elder Basil Bunting he’s writ
poetry with condensation, sharp focus and local speech directness,
in lineage joining William Carlos Williams and ‘Geordie’
lyric vernacular.” —Allen Ginsberg
“Song sings itself in these poems. Their heart is clarity,
spoken. Why shouldn’t the music lead and the heart follow
— and mind be the wonder of their witness? This is a great
poetry made of such common life, each word a step along the way.” —Robert Creeley
With collages by Tom Raworth.