The collected poems / Reynolds Price

Includes index.

Some readers may not know that novelist Price (Promise of Rest) is also a verse craftsman. Some of the poems in this substantial volume recall friends and relations dead, many lost in recent years to AIDS; a considerable portion of the volume is given to a continuing verse diary, "Days and Nights," which unflinchingly records Price's long struggle with spinal cancer and consequent paraplegia, as well as the dreams, memories, and fantasies that accompanied his illness. Notable also are his graceful imitations of poetry by Goethe, Holderlin, Stefan George, and others. Price has always stood apart from contemporary movements in poetry, and although it is true that he is not a technical innovator, it would be perilous to ignore him: he has a rare facility for making the strange familiar, and the familiar fresh. Compassionate and candid, Price seems likely to reach an audience unusually wide for contemporary poetry with this generous collection.