Four Way Books is delighted to congratulate Kevin Prufer on the selection of National Anthem as one of Publishers Weekly's five best poetry books of 2008.
Congratulations, Kevin!
The 5 selected books are below:
Watching the Spring Festival
Frank Bidart (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
In his first collection of short lyrics—a finalist for the NBA—Bidart reflects on aging, regret and a life lived in close contact with, if not through, pop music, art, dance and other monuments of culture.
For All We Know
Ciaran Carson (Wake Forest)
Long hailed as a master poet in his native Ireland, Carson fortifies his reputation here with this meditation on love and mystery that takes the classical fugue as its model.
Colosseum
Katie Ford (Graywolf)
Motored by a deeply personal connection to New Orleans and its inhabitants, Ford chronicles the destruction Katrina wrought, both on the city itself and on Ford's faith—religious and otherwise.
The Shadow of Sirius
W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon)
The latest by one of America's great living masters of the lyric poem—Merwin's best book in a decade—finds the poet reflecting movingly on his own mortality, his oracular voice seeming to predict the past as if it were yet to come.
National Anthem
Kevin Prufer (Four Way)
A rare poetry collection: as angry and ironic over the state of contemporary America—figured here as a great classical empire in decline—as it is funny and perversely pleasurable.
