Overview

After spending thirty-two years tracking stories across the world as a journalist for Time magazine, Wilde turns his eye for engaging detail to poetry in this eighty-two poem debut. At Time he reported on conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq, and also wrote in-depth stories about crime and the death penalty in the U.S. Now, in his poems, Wilde demonstrates his familiarity with the life's horror and whimsy, fusing a world-weary tone with a childlike fascination with word play and animal imagery. Cat and Mouse, for instance, marries dark, violent language to cartoon-like visions of armies of cats and mice doing battle. Wilde's work is most successful, however, when it takes on a quieter, elegiac quality, as in The Funeral in which the poet reflects on how his recently deceased friend would be most at home haunting his old country kitchen/ Dispensing wry Socratic wisdom/ With chain smoking hyena coughing. Moments like this provide a moving and intimate glimpse into a thoroughly lived life.

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9780872331372

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After spending 32 years tracking stories across the world as a journalist for Time magazine, Wilde turns his eye for engaging detail to poetry in this 82 poem debut. At Time he reported on conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq, and also wrote in-depth stories about crime and the death penalty in the U.S. Now, in his poems, Wilde demonstrates his familiarity with life's horror and whimsy, fusing a world-weary tone with a childlike fascination with word play and animal imagery. Cat and Mouse, for instance, marries dark, violent language to cartoon-like visions of armies of cats and mice doing battle. Wilde's work is most successful, however, when it takes on a quieter, elegiac quality, as in The Funeral in which the poet reflects on how his recently deceased friend would be most at home haunting his old country kitchen/ Dispensing wry Socratic wisdom/ With chain smoking hyena coughing. Moments like this provide a moving and intimate glimpse into a thoroughly lived life. --Publisher's Weekly

Author Information

JAMES WILDE (1929 - 2008) was a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. He spent four years in Turkish hospitals battling alcoholism and it's there that he created many of these excellent poems.

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