Toward the Distant Islands New & Selected Poems

This “portable Carruth,” edited and introduced by Sam Hamill, gathers the essential poems from a major American poet. Over his long and prolific career, Carruth has been one of the most rigorous and inventive technicians of a generation that will long be celebrated for its brilliance and variety. This volume presents lyrics and short and long narratives, as well as comic, meditative, and erotic poems, and reflections on the natural world. Ever engaged with radical politics, rural poverty, and the poet’s cultural responsibility, Carruth’s work is alive with a rare courage and clear-eyed conviction. Like the jazz he so loved, Carruth’s poetry ranges from the formal to the spontaneous, from local speech to righteous oratory, from sublime complexity to elegant understatement.