In these brilliant poems from one of contemporary poetry's most intriguing, singular voices, D. A. Powell strikes out for the farther territories of love
and comes back from those fields with loss, with flowers faded, “blossom blast
and dieback.” Chronic describes the flutter and cruelty of erotic encounter,
temptation, and bitter heartsickness, but with Powell’s deep lyric beauty and
his own brand of dark wit.
Praise for Chronic:
“To read Chronic
for the first time is to marvel at the combination of wild emotion and
virtuosic technique (from intricate sytax to rebuses and puns). To read Powell
for the first time (no matter where you start) is to find a great deal of joy.”—Stephen Burt, The London Review of Books
“A collection of piquant poetry about heartbreak that
mixes mordant wit and sophisticated sincerity in equal measure.”—Bookforum
“Wickedly well-tuned work. . . . Chronic is one of those
rare collections that moves beautifully between poetry’s inner / outer
stereopticon.”
—John Freeman, The Los Angeles Times
“Richly romantic yet never sentimental, Powell’s work in Chronic
is often addressed to ‘you’: a friend, a lover, and you, the reader. It’s a
lovely, intimate style.”—Entertainment Weekly
“These poems represent a rare case of a poet learning to
hear himself better—and to communicate more intimately – as soon as he
seemingly mastered his voice. . . . We will still be reading D. A. Powell a long
time from now, both for the record he offers of the last 30 years of American
history and culture and for the new possibilities he has created for
poetry. He is both accessible and
challenging, saying something new, and saying it newly, with each book, yet
speaking with an authority as old as poetry itself.”—Craig Morgan Teicher, Critical Mass, the blog of the
National Book Critics Circle
