Collected Poems, 1954-2004

Irving Feldman is a master chronicler of our collective experience and an overlooked treasure of American poetry. Feldman's rich body of work exhibits his mastery of language from the biblical to theconversational, his Yiddish flair for the comic, his profound social insight and lucidity. He writes about everything from the Coney Island days of his childhood

and his bohemian years in postwar New York to theart of Picasso and George Segal, from the Holocaust to its aftermath-in narrative and dramatic poems and personal lyrics that are by turns ardent, witty, biting, ecstatic, and heartbreaking.

Long a favorite among his fellow poets (John Hollander has called his work "amazing in its moral intensity"), Feldman has remained true to the soul's deepest callings:

I have questioned myself aloud

at night in a voice I did not

recognize, hurried and

disobedient, hardly brighter.

What have I kept? Nothing.

Not bread orthe bread-word.

What have I offered? Rebel

in the kingdom, my gift

has wanted a grace.

This glorious gathering of poems displays Feldman's entire career in all itsvariety and passion, and confirms his place among the great poets of our time. "From the Hardcover edition."