A Donald Justice Reader

Pulitzer Prize - winning poet Donald Justice displays his command of diverse voices and literary forms in these wide-ranging. often surprising selections - some never before collected. There are elegiac poems and stories conjuring people and places from a distant childhood, tributes to literary figures such as Wallace Stevens and Cesar Vallejo, portrayals of asylum patients and the desolution of old men, and critical essays on the power of art to ward off death. The poet's virtuosity in many forms is evident in the structured perfection of a sestina or a villanelle, free verse of various kinds, the rich prose of a short story, or the careful analysis of an essay. His personality - especially his love for music - and his creative method come through strongly, particularly when he treats the same theme in multiple genres. The ending of one story, for example, is retold as a poem; a prose memoir is summarized twice over in a group of poems. These exemplary selections reflect four decades of writing by a master now at the height of his powers.