Green Sees Things in Waves Poems

1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In this powerful and inventive collection, August Kleinzahler succeeds in creating a new idiom for American lyric poetry that captures the velocity and swerves of contemporary life in the city. He pushes the language very hard to get there, and the results are breathtaking: an angular, propulsive poetry that transforms character, voice, and setting into buzzing, luminous events. August Kleinzahlerwas born in Jersey City in 1949. He is the author of ten books of poems and a memoir,Cutty, One Rock.His most recent book of poetry,The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, was awarded the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize. He won the Lannan Literary Award in 2008. He lives in San Francisco. In this inventive and powerful collection, Kleinzahler creates a new idiom for American lyric poetry that captures the swerves of contemporary city life. He pushes the language very hard to get there, and the results are breathtaking.Green Sees Things in Wavesoffers an angular, propulsive poetry that transforms character, voice, imagery, and setting into buzzing, glowing occurences. "Kleinzahler is that rare bird, an unashamed experimentalist with the vision and confident skill to make American poetry new."Clive Wilmer,The Times(London) "Kleinzahler uses the medium to the fullest, not only in weaving the fascinating textures of his verse but alsolike all epigrammatic poetsin getting the maximum out of the minimum."Helen Vendler,The New Yorker

August Kleinzahler's previous collection of poems is Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow (FSG, 1995). He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in San Francisco.

"[Kleinzahler's] best successes are just as crisp and pungent as Pound's most startling images."--DeSales Harrison, Boston Book Review

"This new book is full of off-kilter yet dead-on observations that hover just above our recognition until their very sound trips the brainwire and the 'little truth' falls into place."--Albert Mobilio, Salon