This book of selected poems, really the best of Ben Belitt, is a great contribution to American letters. For nearly fifty years Belitt crafted this verse as powerful, original, and challenging as any in our language. Poet, translator, scholar, and critic, Belitt has a range of tone and a command of subject that is truly extraordinary.
In this volume we find diverse poems of a singular voice. Belitt is a poet of iconoclastic passions, one who is able to take personal events and transform them into magical verse with masterful sequencing of words, images, and thoughts. He has always had a particular gift for turning autobiography into art, his personal geography into verse of universal meaning and poignance.
“In reading the best poems of Ben Belitt one is passed through a screen of artistry into the open air of mature, deep, universal significance. He has pointed his finger to the depths of the heart.”
—Richard Eberhart, New York Times Book Review