David Wagoner – författare

When David Wagoner's last collection, Through the Forest: New and Selected Poems, was published, Harold Bloom noted that Wagoner's "study of American nostalgias is as eloquent and moving as that of James Wright, and like Wright's poetry carries on some of the deepest currents in American verse." The same could be said of Walt Whitman Bathing, in which Wagoner's poems range from the lyric to the satiric, the elegiac to the transcendental, the autobiographical to the visionary. Other comments on Wagoner's earlier works: "Wagoner has the visual acuity of his loved hawks and a lifelong absorption with living and growing things. A lovely wit and a lively intelligence inform these poems." -- Maxine Kumin"When Wagoner looks at something, he brings it to vivid and immediate life through an extraordinary power with a simple name: love. He is as formally various as Thomas Hardy, as playful as Dickinson, as wry as Frost." -- Dave Smith"A sharp-eyed, even gutsy nature poet, the deftest and tenderest of love poets, Wagoner is a verbal magician capable of surprising, sometimes crazy tours de force."-- X. J. Kennedy

David Wagoner has won the acclaim of his peers and been compared with some of the most gifted poets in the English language: Emily Dickinson, James Wright, Robert Frost, Theodore Roethke. The Antioch Review has ascribed to him a"profoundly earthbound sanity," while Publishers Weekly credits him with a "plainspoken formal virtuosity" and a "consistent, pragmatic clarity of perception." His collections have garnered Poetry's Levinson and Union League Prizes, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and nominations for the American Book Award and the National Book Award. For his most recent collection, Walt Whitman Bathing, Wagoner was honored with the Ohioana Book Award in the category of poetry.Witty, eloquent, and insightful, Traveling Light offers new and familiar treasures from a master observer of both the natural and the human worlds. In a style by turns direct and intricate, Wagoner distills the essential emotions from people's encounters with each other, with nature, and with themselves. Through his compassionate but unblinking eyes, we see ourselves and the world that surrounds us more sharply delineated.

As a recipient of Poetry's Levinson Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize and a nominee for the American Book Award and National Book Award, David Wagoner is one of this country's most celebrated poets.  In The House of Song, he offers a hundred new poems in six parts.  At turns elegiac, comic, and nostalgic, these poems venture to the seemingly infinitesimal points where people, legends, and culture collide with nature, memory, and action.   With characteristic wit and brevity, Wagoner chronicles the material invasions of the natural world, reconsidering Thoreau amid ruminations on voyeurs and destroyers, slug watchers and moth collectors.  The House of Song asserts Wagoner's place among the finest of American poets, past and present.

By continually discovering what's new in each day without forgetting yesterday's surprises, David Wagoner has succeeded in constantly expanding his range in a career that spans more than fifty years. In Good Morning and Good Night, this range includes his usual rich forays into nature and personalities, and poetry for all ages, young and old, amidst a vivid array of memories and explorations. Readers will find homages to the poets that have inspired him, as well as the bountiful lyricism that has made Wagoner's poetry one of our most enduring sources of delight and joy.Good Morning and Good Night features poems previously published in American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Atlantic Monthly, Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, New Letters, The New Republic, Poetry, Shenandoah, Southern Review, The Yale Review, and other leading literary journals.

David Wagoner's wide-ranging poetry buzzes and swells with life. Woods, streams, and fields fascinate him--he happily admits his devotion to Thoreau--but so do people and their habits, dear friends and family, the odd poet, and strangers who become even stranger when looked at closely. In this new collection, Wagoner catches the mixed feelings of a long drive, the sensations of walking against a current, the difficulty of writing poetry with noisily amorous neighbors, and many more uniquely familiar experiences.

Award-winning poet David Wagoner and renowned editor David Lehman present the 2009 edition of Best American Poetry—"a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune).Eagerly anticipated by scholars, students, readers, and poets alike, Scribner’s Best American Poetry series has achieved brand-name status in the literary world, serving as a yearly guide to who’s who in American poetry. Known for his marvelous narrative skill and humane wit, David Wagoner is one of the few poets of his generation to win the universal admiration of his peers. Working in conjunction with series editor David Lehman, Wagoner brings his refreshing eye to this year’s anthology. With new work by established poets, such as Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, Mark Doty, and Bob Hicok, The Best American Poetry 2009 also features some of tomorrow’s leading luminaries. Readers of all ages and backgrounds will treasure this illuminating collection of modern American verse. With its high-profile editorship and its generous embrace of American poetry in all its exuberant variety, the Best American Poetry series continues to be, as Robert Pinsky says, "as good a comprehensive overview of contemporary poetry as there can be."