New and Selected Poems 1958-1980

Although best known for his fiction—including important novels such as Little Casino, Gold Fools (available from Green Integer), Aberration of Starlight, and Mulligan Stew—Gilbert Sorrentino is also a distinguished poet, the author of over eight volumes of poetry. The current volume reprints his Selected Poems 1958-1980 and includes 27 new poems and poem sequences published since 1980.

Sorrentino’s poetry is at once beautifully imagistic and filled with the magic of startling language. His works are precise and yet dazzlingly abstract, and some use, to great effect, Oulipian devices. Satiric landscapes like “A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Bay Area” are alternated with brilliant recastings of older forms, as in “Strambotto” and “Depression Canzone.” Taken together, these poems reveal Sorrentino as a major contemporary American poet.

See the PIP Biography of this author