The Man in the Wall: Poems by James Laughlin

by James Laughlin

James Laughlin has been called the American Catullus. Like that most Greek of ancient Latin poets, he elevates his everyday subjects with wit and clarity of language. Love and hate, death and aging, politics, literature, travel, the horrors of war - Laughlin's muse speaks of all these things with a fresh directness that makes his poems both timeless and contemporary. The founder of New Directions, Laughlin's efforts as publisher and poet have been to prolong and extend the old poetic traditions. Poetry for him is, in Gertrude Stein's phrase, a "continuous present" in all times and cultures. Laughlin developed his distinctive tight metrics with the advice of William Carlos Williams. A longer, comical line is found in the recent poems of Laughlin's doppelganger, Hiram Handspring. The Man in the Wall follows Laughlin's recent Collected Poems (Moyer Bell Limited).

118 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

James Laughlin was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing.

One of Laughlin's most anthologized works is "Step on His Head", a poem about his relationship with his children.

Reviews

[Michael Gossett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second favorite Laughlin book (behind 'In Another Country').

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moves from the sublime to the utterly predictable to the clever to the pedantic political rant. In other words, very uneven....