Kirjahaku

A tribute to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's career features the writer's theme of classic American melancholy and includes such pieces as "Bus Stop," "Men at Forty," "Crossing Kansas by Train," and "The Small White Churches of the Small White Towns." Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Justice’s insights serve as a sort of de facto taxonomy, an organically designed system that he uses to present his lecture on each respective aspect of the evolution of poetic form. There is no formal thesis here, but rather a kind of scrapbook that has a broader motive. The material possesses no hidden secrets; the treasures lie in plain sight and simply need be discerned to open the artist’s mind to their possibilities.

Anthony Hecht described Donald Justice as ‘among other things, the supreme heir of Wallace Stevens.’ This memorial volume of his complete poetry testifies to his subtle and enduring brilliance. With painterly vividness and plainspoken elegance he endeavoured to make the local views which his titles often evoke – ‘Bus Stop’, ‘Men at Forty’, ‘Dance Lessons of the Thirties’ – part of the literary heritage from which he so often took solace and inspiration.