Penetralia

A new book of poems after the release last year of his monumental collected poetry collection: The Essential Poems (1960-2015). The world embraced by Eshleman’s poetry is our world. As a contemporary writer, Eshleman’s history is our own: his writing a record and reflection of our times. Eshleman’s story — the story revealed in his poetry — is the story of mid-America meeting the wider world; the story of social and political radicalism, of a counterculture raising a voice in poetry and in art; of the challenges, frustrations and anomie that befell that counterculture and of the continued and indeed on-going drama of empire and overreaching power, from Vietnam and El Salvador to Afghanistan and Iraq. Eshleman’s life in letters has exemplified a commitment to ceaseless, wide-ranging exploration and encounter: with other places, other people, other poetries — foreign and familiar —, other modes of thought and image. As he has written of his work: “I dream of poems that could change something essential / about the way a few people view creation…”