Description: Hell, I Love Everybody: 52 Poems by James Tate re-introduces the poet, providing a poem for every week of the year, every mood and season. It includes work from his first publication, The Lost Pilot, a Yale Younger Poets selection (1967) and all his subsequent books. He is a most agile poet in a precarious world. Life is alarming, absurd, but properly considered that absurdity reveals, often with laughter, the something else by which we live. All Tate's poems are about our world, our wrecked, vexed love for it. Tate was described as a surrealist. If he is, that surrealism issues in a vision of a world delivered back to itself by candour. John Ashbery wrote of 'his genius: passionate, humane, funny, tragic, and always surprising and mind-delighting'. -- Publisher's website.
Brief description:
James Tate's poems have been awarded the National Book Award, the Pulitzer
Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Yale
Younger Poets Award, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and
have been translated across the globe. Tate was a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters; his many collections include The Lost Pilot, The
Oblivion Ha-Ha, Absences, Distance from Loved Ones, Worshipful Company
of Fletchers, and The Ghost Soldiers. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he made his
home in Pelham, Massachusetts.
Review Quotes:
"The poems of James Tate will keep speaking to people for a very long time into the future, because they never stop caring and never stop having fun. They are, to my ear, lovely verbal reminders that everything should be regarded as mysterious and dear." - George Saunders, author of Liberation Day and Lincoln in the Bardo
"A brilliant collection of poems from one of the most singular minds ever to have graced the page. Not only does this book exemplify Tate's unmatched imagination, but it also celebrates his intelligence, tenderness, and attention. This book is an absolute must-read for any poetry lover." - Ada Limón, author of The Carrying and Bright Dead Things
"Quintessential poems by virtuoso of absurdity Tate are woven into a whimsical, rollicking, and utterly jarring retrospective that showcases an unparalleled mind...Tenacious, surreal, impish, and soul mending, these poems invite the reader into a transcendent world." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"...A slim volume, and every poem in it will give readers the Monty Python-esque sensation we should look for when reading one of Tate's many poems...Many of these most-beloved poems feel new again...essential reading for anyone trying to achieve a daily balance in today's world." - Heavy Feather Review
"...A valuable introduction to a poet whose work consistently interrogates this question--What are the chances?--forcing us to reconsider our definitions of both normal and unusual, reality and unexpected...Nevertheless, the great success of Tate's writing is to broaden our idea of what is possible in poetry, of what truly belongs there." - Los Angeles Book Review