The Ghost Soldiers: Poems

By James Tate

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate returns with his fifteenth book of poetry, an exciting new collection that offers nearly one hundred fresh and thought-provoking pieces that embody Tate's trademark style and voice: his accessibility, his dark humor, and his exquisite sense of the absurd.

Tate's work is stark—he writes in clear, everyday language—yet his seemingly simple and macabre stories are layered with broad and trenchant meaning. His characters are often lost or confused, his settings bizarre, his scenarios brilliantly surreal. Opaque, inscrutable people float through a dreamlike world where nothing is as it seems. The Ghost Soldiers offers resounding proof, once again, that Tate stands alone in American poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 8, 2008
• ISBN: 9780061734434

James Tate

James Tate's poems have been awarded the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Yale Younger Poets Award, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and have been translated across the globe. Tate was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; his many collections include The Lost Pilot, The Oblivion Ha-Ha, Absences, Distance from Loved Ones, Worshipful Company of Fletchers, and The Ghost Soldiers. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he made his home in Pelham, Massachusetts.

Reviews for The Ghost Soldiers

[jburlinson_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Here is what Charles Simic, talking about James Tate, said, quoting Charles Mingus talking about Ornette Coleman: "He does everything wrong, but it sounds right." Here's hoping that Tate goes on doing wrong for a good long while yet.