Poetry. In its sharp ear for everyday speech and fascination with the realms that lie beneath the surface of ordinary reality, the lyric poetry of Peter Cole elegantly carries forward a powerful American tradition that merges the visionary with the immediacy of direct experience--a lineage carried from Emily Dickinson and W.C. Williams into the broad possibilities of the present. In the long poems and lyrics of this collection, a poignant vision emerges--of Jerusalem, the Bible, Jewish liturgical writing, and of the secular mystery hidden in the Hebrew tradition. Originally published in a special artist's edition, the much acclaimed RIFT presents an original voice of the highest intensity.
Peter Cole has published several books of poems and many volumes of translations from Hebrew and Arabic, both medieval and modern. He has received numerous honors for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and in 2007 he was named a MacArthur Fellow.