Keynote
The remarkable discovery of Landis Everson, first winner of The Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson First Book Award
Book Title
Everything Preserved
Subtitle
Poems 1955-2005
Cover Image
- "This remarkable debut collection has an unusual silence at its heart. . . purposeful and unpredictable."—The New Yorker
Body
"Why did Landis Everson stop writing poetry for forty-three years?" asks the New York Times in a recent feature article. This question permeates Everson's extraordinary first book, Everything Preserved, which collects poems written between 1955 and 1960 and, after a long silence, poems written between 2003 and 2005.
A friend of poets Robin Blaser, Robert Duncan, and Jack Spicer, Everson became a significant figure of the Berkeley Renaissance in the 1940s and 1950s, which rebelled against the strictures of formalism to bring the poet's unmediated mind onto the page. After the group disbanded, Everson stopped writing for over four decades, but at the prompting of editor and poet Ben Mazer, he began writing the vivid, spontaneous, and marvelous poems of the last few years.
Selected by The Poetry Foundation from over 1,100 submissions, Everything Preserved is the debut winner of the Emily Dickinson First Book Award, which recognizes an American poet over the age of fifty who has yet to publish a book of poetry.
"Landis Everson's sudden return comes in a flood of poems written in the past two years. The fresh, accomplished voice at our elbow sounds like that of a major American poet--except that it belongs to none of them. It belongs to Landis Everson."—John Barr, president of The Poetry Foundation
A friend of poets Robin Blaser, Robert Duncan, and Jack Spicer, Everson became a significant figure of the Berkeley Renaissance in the 1940s and 1950s, which rebelled against the strictures of formalism to bring the poet's unmediated mind onto the page. After the group disbanded, Everson stopped writing for over four decades, but at the prompting of editor and poet Ben Mazer, he began writing the vivid, spontaneous, and marvelous poems of the last few years.
Selected by The Poetry Foundation from over 1,100 submissions, Everything Preserved is the debut winner of the Emily Dickinson First Book Award, which recognizes an American poet over the age of fifty who has yet to publish a book of poetry.
"Landis Everson's sudden return comes in a flood of poems written in the past two years. The fresh, accomplished voice at our elbow sounds like that of a major American poet--except that it belongs to none of them. It belongs to Landis Everson."—John Barr, president of The Poetry Foundation
List Price
$15.00
Purchase at
Purchase at:
About the Author
Praise
- “A visionary poet.”—Rain Taxi Review of Books
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
This book is made possible, in part, through the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson First Book Award, which recognizes an American poet over the age of 40 who has yet to publish a book, and by the generosity of Graywolf Press donors like you.
