Description:
David Biespiel's energetic language, so varied and musical and precise, is quite unmatched by that of other contemporary poets. The Book of Men and Women is his second collection in the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series, and as always he is the master of the long line, his words strung across its reach as tightly as beads. But new poems in this book explore the intimacies of the shorter line as well and display Biespiel's formal inventiveness and emotional range.
The Book of Men and Women addresses our time and human condition in ways both domestic and global. The first section of the book is filled with the wonderful agitation of spell-making language. The poems are connected to the social and historical world, and yet at the same time, they prepare us for the mythic story about men and women that is promised in the book's title. The second section is more formally restrained and as such imbues the speaker with the distinction and melancholy gravitas that characterize the collection. We see this in the remarkable and fully imagined tour de force, "William Clark's Sonnets."
The book concludes with a series of autobiographical poems that confront the frailties of love and desire with unflinching intimacy and gratitude. These last poems, composed during an intense three-month period of writing, as well as the other poems in this remarkable volume, showcase Biespiel at the very top of his form.
Brief description: David Biespiel is a poet, literary critic, columnist, and contributing writer at the American Poetry Review, the New Republic, the New York Times, Slate, Poetry, Politico, and The Rumpus, among other publications. He is the author of ten books, most recently The Education of a Young Poet, named by Poets & Writers as a Best Book for Writers; A Long High Whistle, which received the 2016 Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction; and The Book of Men and Women, which was chosen one of the Best Books of the Year by the Poetry Foundation and received the 2011 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. He was a 2018 National Book Critics Circle Finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Recipient of Lannan, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stegner fellowships, he has taught at Stanford University, University of Maryland, George Washington University, and Wake Forest University, in addition to other colleges and universities. He is Poet in Residence at Oregon State University and president of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters.
Review Quotes:
"When David Biespiel tempers his 'bared teeth' voice with a commitment to the things, and not just the atmospheres, of this world, he can register sharp portraits of people, in relationships and alone, in all their bitter, beautiful want."
-- "Poetry Magazine"