Divine Nothingness

Gerald Stern (1925—2022), the author of nineteen volumes of poetry, was awarded the National Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Wallace Stevens Award, among many other honors.

"Gerald Stern has made an immense contribution to American poetry. His poems are not only great poems, memorable ones, but ones that get into your heart and stay there. Their lyrical ecstasies take you up for that moment so that your vision is changed, you are changed. The voice is intimate, someone unafraid to be imperfect. Gerald Stern's poems sing in praise of the natural world, and in outrage of whatever is antihuman." -- Toi Derricote "The best work of his career ... Stern's free verse-derived from William Carlos Williams-repudiates old rules while not quite creating its own: his incidents take on their own life, chaotic yet restrained, broken but passionate." -- Publishers Weekly "Stern, at 89, is as robust and forthright as ever, occupying the page with insouciant skill, wry humor, and flashing passion. His long-lined, long poems move with a jazzy tension, pushing the limits and keeping time, rippling and sliding like piano riffs, while his sonnets quake." -- Donna Seaman - Booklist