“Something of the energy, the savagery and emotional fierceness of Robert Lowell’s early poems is to be found in this impressive book.”
—Anthony Hecht
THE
OPTIMIST
is Joshua Mehigan’s first book of poems. Selected by James Cummins
as winner of the Hollis Summers Prize, The
Optimist was printed in 2004 by Ohio
University Press and named
one of ForeWord’s top ten university press books of that
year.
In
spring 2005, it was chosen as one of five finalists for a Los
Angeles Times Book Prize. It
received a second printing in summer 2005.
Published
in
The New York Times, Ploughshares,
Poetry,
and many other periodicals, poems from The Optimist are featured
in collections such as Poetry Daily,
Pushcart Prize XXX, and Penguin’s Poetry: A Pocket Anthology.
The Optimist draws on a large range of subjects, including
weather, murder, retirement, noise pollution, and medieval ascetics.
Grounded in the lyric mode, but informed by narrative and dramatic elements,
the
poems in The
Optimist consider abiding themes like death, desire, and consciousness
with a unique mix of reason and compassion. Click
here for a sample.
“A work of some poise and finish, by turns delicate and robust. . . . does not feel like a debut.”
—D.H. Tracy, in Poetry
“There is more insight into domestic grief in these and other poems in The Optimist than in a dozen louder, more overtly confessional books. And that sense of insight born from experience is what makes Mehigan’s work so moving and impressive. Few American poets, old or young, seem to know so much.”
—Adam Kirsch, in Contemporary Poetry Review
“Hallelujah . . . for the poems of Joshua Mehigan, which make me a believer all over again.”
—David Mason, in Hudson Review
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