Product Description

From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize

Carl Dennis has become one of the most important American poets writing today. Unknown Friends, his tenth book, is about separation and connection, about actual friends we can never know fully and friends never met who are summoned into existence through the efforts of an imagination that insists on dialogue. While accepting our ignorance as inevitable, the poems work to expand the notion of what it means to be part of a community larger than any we can comprehend, both a community given to us by history and one outside of history through which the world of experience is nurtured and sustained.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1104102 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Dennis's 10th book, the first since his 2004 New and Selected, continues in the Pulitzer-winning poet's generous and thoughtful—though, perhaps overfamiliar—vein. Long sentences arranged into a loose, self-confident free verse of approximated pentameters celebrate the small-scale triumphs, ordinary disappointments and late-life reconciliations of the poet and the characters of his kindhearted America—"the neighbor who seems to be playing the same piece/ On her upright piano"; "Larry Fenster, owner of Fenster's Bike Repair"; "the straight-backed, white-haired woman/ Waiting for the bus in the rain." Of "Our Generation," Dennis asks and answers generalized yet heartfelt questions: "Did we work with joy? With no less joy/ Than people felt in the generations before us." The best poems take on subjects apart from his own life, each one able to set the poem apart—"A Visit to West Point," for example (in which this peace-loving poet considers the military profession), or the secular mass of Times Square on New Year's Eve. Dennis (Practical Gods) has sought to make happiness—achieved or thwarted—as fertile, and as intellectually interesting, as rage, grief or frustration have been for other poets. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
After winning the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Practical Gods, Dennis offers a weaker collection. Especially early in this new volume, his poems--abstractly concerned with human connections often accidental or between strangers--are longer, looser, and less focused. Poetry doesn't always have to be somber and crystalline, of course, but a certain cozy languor, a slackness of line and theme, is creeping into Dennis' work. Too many of the poems--such as "The God of Dogs," a mock-cosmic riff on man's best friend--increasingly emit a satisfied, homey quality that may make Dennis welcome on A Prairie Home Companion but could strike some readers as cute and cloying. The poet is best in ruminative, autumnal pieces such as "Near Dusk," "A Sect," "To My Body," and "Talk," in which the shadow of time deepens and darkens the proceedings well beyond the reach of humor or fireside chats. Kevin Nance
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Review
Carl Dennis is a poet who has valuable things to say—about faith (or its absence) in the modern world, fear, and regret—in ways that are personal and universal at the same time. . . . Dennis constantly surprises. -- Joseph Parisi

Customer Reviews

More of same, still good
Carl Dennis is a solid, rewarding poet who doesn't resort to gimmicks but does honor form and sound. No chopped up prose for him.

This is a fine volume to start with, then get the rest if this matches your taste.