Signs & Wonders

Two of Charles Martin's earlier collections of poetry, What the Darkness Proposes and Steal the Bacon, were published by Johns Hopkins, as was his translation, The Poems of Catullus. In 2005 he received an Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

"Charles Martin's new book, Signs & Wonders, is elegant and powerful. Past and present commingle as he writes poems of contemporary life in traditional form, and with a remarkable range: 'Poem for the Millennium' in accentual verse, and one of the best 9/11 poems we have in terza rima. Taking his cue from Catullus and Ovid, whose work he has brilliantly translated, Martin creates his own new vision of the world in language of praise with an underlying tone of combined horror and awe." (Grace Schulman) "As Signs & Wonders demonstrates so triumphantly, you'd have a hard time to find better contemporary poems than Charles Martin's. I can only be grateful for 'Ovid to His Book,' 'Support,' 'Poem for the Millennium,; 'Near Jeffrey's Hook,' 'After 9/11,' 'Poison,' and many more. Martin does not merely write well-made, shapely poems; he charges them with energy. I'm placing my bet that they will last." (X. J. Kennedy) "Like an expert cellist in full control of phrasing and intonation, he can make a line of metrical verse sonorous or playful, tenebrous or scintillating, elegiac or mercurial." (David Yezzi)"

• Directions for AssemblyI. The Life in LettersThe Flower ThiefSouvenirSome Kind of HappinessThe Sacred MonstersWords to Utter at NightfallMind in the TreesAutopsychographySupportEast Side, West Side1. Vermeer at the Frick: His Mistress and Maid2. John Koch at the New-York Historical Society: The PartyTo HimselfBrooklyn in the SeventiesThis Organizing SolitudeThis Organizing SolitudeTheory VictoriousII. Some RomansOn a Roman Perfume BottleAva PacisOvid to His BookThree Sonnets from the Romanesco of G.G. Belli1. The Good Soldiers2. The Spaniard3. The Coffee House PhilosopherIII. Near Jeffrey's HookThe Twentieth Century in PhotographsPoem for the MillenniumWho Knows What's Best?Getting CardedFor the End of the Age of IronyNear Jeffrey's HookForebodingAfter 9/11After Wang WeiPoisonAcknowledgments