Read more
"In One Summer Evening at the Falls, Peter Campion writes about modern love. In narrative poems and traditional lyrics, in both formal and free verse, he writes from a surprising array of perspectives: desire and loss, betrayal and guilt, and commitment and renewal. Voices proliferate in these poems, translation gives way to found speech, autobiography trades places with dramatic monologue, and casual storytelling takes on an almost ritual intensity. For all his meticulous, formal patterning, however, Campion remains open to spontaneity and disruption. He renders the people in his poems with the depth and distinctiveness they deserve, and represents messy, contemporary life with a vivacity that suggests that the times we live in, for all their depredations, may also be worthy of our love. Campion looks at how love both undoes us and makes us who we are. Throughout, we see Campion balancing virtuosic writing with classical sturdiness. It's a surprising look at contemporary intimacy, and Campion's most far-reaching collection of poems to date"--
About the author
Peter Campion is the author of three previous collections of poetry and most recently of
Radical as Reality: Form and Freedom in American Poetry. His poems have appeared in publications including
Poetry,
Slate,
Harvard Review,
Kenyon Review, and
New Republic, among others. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, he teaches in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Minnesota.
Summary
Blending styles, voices, and settings, Campion's poems show how each character and each moment can be worthy of love and that this love both undoes us and makes us who we are.
