Collected Poems

Now in paperback, the stunning lifework of this beloved prize-winning poet, gathered in one volume, covering sixty years of poetry, from 1956 to 2016. This celebratory volume covers nearly all of Marie Ponsot's published work, from (published in 1956 as number five in the famous Pocket Poets series from City Lights press) through (2009) her most recent collection; and it also includes some work written in the years since. Here is the lyrical joy, the full range of Ponsot's gift for constructing the pleasures and pains of a riddle that the music and wit of her language solve just in the nick of time, in the "hand-span skill" that is the poem. Notable in this collection is the astonishing accomplishment of Ponsot's sonnets: the traditional form in varieties we've never seen in one book before. Open these pages anywhere to experience "language as the primitive dialect of our human race," as she has described it—to gratefully enter a state that is "what poetry hopes of us and for us: enraptured attention."