X - (Lannan Literary Selections) by James Galvin (Paperback)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

"X" is the kiss and betrayal, the embrace, the crucifixion, the mathematical unknown. In his sixth book of poems, James Galvin writes from a deep, philosophical engagement with the landscape and faces a "vertigo of solitude" with his marriage dissolved, his only daughter grown and gone, and the log house he built by hand abandoned. "What did I love that made me believe it would last?" he asks.

Something has to be true enough to be
Taken for granted.
In the hospital I saw
An old man
Caressing the face of an old woman.
This same man, young, caressed her face
In just that way.
That's the stillness
At the center of change--
A sadness worth dying for, I swear--
There is no other.
--from "Dying into What I've Done"

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."--The Nation

"In James Galvin we have a superior poet."--American Book Review

"Galvin's poems have the virtues of precise observation and original language, yes, but what he also brings to the table is a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make the slightest of his poems an architectural pleasure."--Harvard Review

James Galvin has published five collections of poetry, most recently Resurrection Update: Collected Poems 1975-1997, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Lenore Marshall/The Nation Prize. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed prose book, The Meadow and a novel, Fencing the Sky. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, where he works as a rancher part of each year, and in Iowa City, where he is a member of the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Review Quotes

"Galvin's poems have the virtues of precise observation and original language, yes, but what he also brings to the table is a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make the slightest of his poems an architectural pleasure."

"In James Galvin we have a superior poet."

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."

Something has to be true enough to be Taken for granted. In the hospital I saw An old man Caressing the face of an old woman. This same man, young, caressed her face In just that way. That's the stillness At the center of change-- A sadness worth dying for, I swear-- There is no other.

About the Author

James Galvin is both a rancher in Wyoming and on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of six books of poems, an acclaimed memoir The Meadow, and a novel.