O Paradise: Poems

By William Trowbridge

As Howard Nemerov has said in praise of William Trowbridge’s first poetry collection: “he is very much up on the peculiarities of our little world … He is both funny and serious, seriously funny; probably the best, if not the only, way of dealing with the complex predicament.”

Continuing in this third collection of poems to work in the realm of the serio-comic, Trowbridge explores other borderlands—between the tangible world and the intuitive one, between actuality and memory, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between self as flesh and blood and self as ghost.

This is fast-faced, nervy poetry whose witty, vernacular language moves surprisingly toward transcendence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 1995
• ISBN: 9781610752848

William Trowbridge

William Trowbridge is the author of six full poetry collections and four chapbooks, including the poetry comic book Oldguy (Red Hen Press, 2016). His new collection is Vanishing Point (Red Hen Press, 2017). His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship, a Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Yaddo, and The Anderson Center. The former Poet Laureate of Missouri (2012–2016), he teaches in the University of Nebraska Low-residency MFA in Writing Program and lives in the Kansas City area.

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