James Galvin

Describes the lives of Lyle, Ray, Clara, and the Western terrain of the meadow where they settled, discussing their triumphs and tragedies

The Meadow

Gathers previously published and new poems from the noted poet

Collected Poems, 1975-1997

Resurrection Update

2002 Lannan Award winner explores through poetry the "vertigo of solitude" as his family dissolves.

Poems

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."—The Nation "Bleak and unsentimental but blessedly free of self-indulgence, these poems give the feeling of being absolutely essential."—Library Journal "Galvin [has] the virtues of precise observation and original language . . . a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make [each] poem an architectural pleasure."—Harvard Review In his first collection in seven years, James Galvin expands upon his signature spare and gnomic lyric as he engages restrained astonishment, desire, and loss in a confessional voice. Whether considering masterpieces of painting or describing the austere landscape of his native Wyoming ranchlands, Galvin turns to highly imagistic yet intimate narratives to rain down compassion within isolation. From "On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses": On starless, windless nights like this I imagine I can hear the wedding dresses Weeping in their closets, Luminescent with hopeless longing, Like hollow angels. They know they will never be worn again. Who wants them now, After their one heroic day in the limelight? Yet they glow with desire In the darkness of closets. James Galvin passionately depicts the rural American West and the interactions between humans and nature in his best-selling memoir The Meadow and his novel Fencing the Sky. Galvin is also the author of several volumes of poetry and teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He divides his time between Iowa and Wyoming.

Everything We Always Knew Was True

This fourth collection from the author of the prose masterpiece The Meadow is inspired by the often harsh subrural landscape of southwestern Wyoming where Galvin has spent most of the past decade building a log home, beginning with the felling of trees. Firsthand knowledge of the expansive landscape of the west provides perspective more than mere imagery, reducing human activity to its proper dimension. Galvin adds a kind of pre-Socratic intelligence, a stoical turn of mind, and genuine love of hard physical work to make poems that are direct, spare, compact, and stripped of rhetorical or aesthetic device.

Lethal Frequencies

James Galvin is a Wyoming rancher and on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

As is

A haunting novel of the American West about an accidental murder that springs from the best intentions. Stepping his horse through the lush, beaver-worked draw looking for stray cows, Mike Arans never imagined that, moments later, he'd find himself swinging a nylon loop around Merriweather Snipes and pulling until his neck snapped. Once Snipes was dead, Mike fished a notepad and a stub of pencil from his pocket, wrote "I did this," signed his name, and stuffed the note into Snipes's breast pocket. Then Mike rode to his house, stocked up on supplies, and rode due west. Fencing the Sky is the story of how circumstances spiral out of control, the story of gross indifference and avarice in the face of breathtaking beauty. Ultimately, James Galvin's novel is a book about violence and how it destroys lives when the land is at stake. This long-awaited lyrical first novel is nothing less than the story of the disappearance of the American West.

A Novel

Fencing the Sky

Marvin Bell

Poems explore the way of life of the inhabitants of the small towns of the American Midwest

James Galvin

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