State of the Union

By Wave Books Description Reviews William Carlos Williams wrote, It is difficult/to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there. State of the Union brings together 50 American poets from the front lines of American poetics whose work boldly illustrates the urgency of Williams’s forewarning. Contributors include John Ashbery, Anselm Berrigan, Lucille Clifton, CAConrad, Peter Gizzi, Albert Goldbarth, Terrance Hayes, Fanny Howe, Tao Lin, Eileen Myles, Michael Palmer, Wang Ping, Richard Siken, Juliana Spahr, James Tate, Catherine Wagner, Joe Wenderoth, Dara Wier, Rebecca Wolff, John Yau and many more. The best of the best in this volume practices the art of subtlety well. And it’s not always the younger poets who do this. Sometimes it’s one of the heavyweights. John Ashbery, in “Annuals and Perennials,” sums up the America of the moment: “We have no shapes but power.” Jay Robinson, Barn Owl Review Many of the best poems in this