James Galvin – författare

Through short vignettes that read like a novel, James Galvin depicts the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado-Wyoming border. Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, but most of all he reveals deeply personal portraits of the few people who live there and who do not so much possess but are themselves possessed by the terrain.

For Lyle, Ray, Clara, and App, the struggle to survive on an independent family ranch is a series of blameless failures and unacclaimed successes that illuminate the Western character. The Meadow evolves a sense of place that can be achieved only by someone who knows it intimately.

"X" is the kiss and betrayal, the embrace, the crucifixion, the mathematical unknown. In his sixth book of poems, James Galvin writes from a deep, philosophical engagement with the landscape and faces a "vertigo of solitude" with his marriage dissolved, his only daughter grown and gone, and the log house he built by hand abandoned. "What did I love that made me believe it would last?" he asks.

Something has to be true enough to beTaken for granted.In the hospital I sawAn old manCaressing the face of an old woman.This same man, young, caressed her faceIn just that way.That’s the stillnessAt the center of change—A sadness worth dying for, I swear—There is no other.—from "Dying into What I’ve Done"

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."—The Nation

"In James Galvin we have a superior poet."—American Book Review

"Galvin’s poems have the virtues of precise observation and original language, yes, but what he also brings to the table is a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make the slightest of his poems an architectural pleasure."—Harvard Review

James Galvin has published five collections of poetry, most recently Resurrection Update: Collected Poems 1975–1997, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Lenore Marshall/The Nation Prize. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed prose book, The Meadow and a novel, Fencing the Sky. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, where he works as a rancher part of each year, and in Iowa City, where he is a member of the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

“James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry.”—The Nation

"Galvin's poems seem straightforward enough—but they're not....Galvin writes here like a force of nature. VERDICT: Excellent reading for contemporary poetry enthusiasts not looking for the overblown."—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

James Galvin's poems have zero percent body fat. His tightly controlled and detailed poems evoke measured optimism in a spare existential world where certain characters—“The Mastermind” and the “Members of the Board”—are recurring shadows. Like fables suggesting new truths, personal narratives and love poems intertwine to confront the various paradoxes of domestic life, art, and politics, and the line “All poems are love poems” leans hard against “Some poems are better off dead.” In As Is, both claim their hard-won place.

I think black holes are just plasticGarbage bags blowing down the midnight highwayThat is the Universe. There aren't as many dimensions as we thought.A black hole can disappear anything that nears it.We all know that.The farthest away I've ever been is in my own home,Finally cleaning out my daughter's roomSo another little girl can live here.The black plastic bag I held in my handWas infinitely capacious.I mean I could throw anything in there.

James Galvin is a Wyoming rancher and on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of six books of poetry, a novel, and the acclaimed memoir The Meadow. He lives in Tie Siding, Wyoming, and Iowa City, Iowa.

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."—The Nation

"Bleak and unsentimental but blessedly free of self-indulgence, these poems give the feeling of being absolutely essential."—Library Journal

"Galvin [has] the virtues of precise observation and original language . . . a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make [each] poem an architectural pleasure."—Harvard Review

In his first collection in seven years, James Galvin expands upon his signature spare and gnomic lyric as he engages restrained astonishment, desire, and loss in a confessional voice. Whether considering masterpieces of painting or describing the austere landscape of his native Wyoming ranchlands, Galvin turns to highly imagistic yet intimate narratives to rain down compassion within isolation.

From "On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses":

On starless, windless nights like thisI imagineI can hear the wedding dressesWeeping in their closets,Luminescent with hopeless longing,Like hollow angels.They know they will never be worn again.Who wants them now,After their one heroic day in the limelight?Yet they glow with desireIn the darkness of closets.

James Galvin passionately depicts the rural American West and the interactions between humans and nature in his best-selling memoir The Meadow and his novel Fencing the Sky. Galvin is also the author of several volumes of poetry and teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He divides his time between Iowa and Wyoming.