The Long Meadow

Laughlin award of The Academy of American Poets

We hold it against you that you survived.

People better than you are dead,

but you still punch the clock.

Your body has wizened but has not bled

-from "Survivor"

Vijay Seshadri's first collection of poems, Wild Kingdom, was celebrated as one of the most exciting debuts in years. In The Long Meadow, Seshadri presents a brilliant array of formally inventive and emotionally powerful new poems in which the poet's wit and vivacity are poised against the alarming complexities of human experience. Through disparate forms and strategies, from the long narrative and the brief rhyming lyric to the prose meditation, The Long Meadow looks into and through our troubled world with a poetic sensibility that transforms history into metaphysics and disaster into possibility. Here is the voice of one of contemporary poetry's new masters.

Seshadri's first collection of poems, Wild Kingdom, was celebrated as one of the most exciting debuts in years. Now comes The Long Meadow, a razor-sharp yet readable array of formally inventive, emotionally powerful new poems in which the poet's wit and vivacity are poised against the alarming complexities of human experience. Through disparate forms and strategies, from the long narrative to the brief rhyming lyric to the prose-poem meditation, Seshadri looks intoand throughour troubled world with a poetic sensibility that transforms history into metaphysics and disaster into possibility. At last we have the second book by one of contemporary American poetry's new masters.

"This is a strong, almost reckless voice turning dark experience into an unrelenting sense of possibility. From the rhyming stanzas to a long prose meditation, the [book's] power of casual declamation holds sway."Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Grave and witty, classical and contemporary, and casually brilliant . . . Profound and delightful."Campbell McGrath

"A deeply moving, eloquent, huge-hearted, and razor-eyed (not to mention brilliantly crafted) book."Thomas Lux

"[Seshadri is] one of the most respected poets working in America today."Time Out New York

"Seshadri's ability to see where the fantastic and the realistic mingle, 'where matter becomes number and number matter,' and to draw casually convincing distinctions gives this book its understated but gently persuasive power."The New York Times Book Review

"In The Long Meadow, [Seshadri] has created a collection of poems that manages to feel both classical and contemporary, and that are unified, despite their formal diversity, by a fearless, subtle, and elastic intelligence. This dialectical iconoclasm is manifest in the intellectual range and ambition Seshadri brings to the page; his poetry speaks in the voice of an urbane conversationlist whose restless intellect impels him, somewhat to his embarrassment, beyond the well-pruned vineyards of wit and into the metaphysical brier patch. The Long Meadow is both ironic and deeply felt, delightful and profound."American Poet

Laughlin award of The Academy of American Poets

We hold it against you that you survived.

People better than you are dead,

but you still punch the clock.

Your body has wizened but has not bled

-from "Survivor"

Vijay Seshadri's first collection of poems, Wild Kingdom, was celebrated as one of the most exciting debuts in years. In The Long Meadow, Seshadri presents a brilliant array of formally inventive and emotionally powerful new poems in which the poet's wit and vivacity are poised against the alarming complexities of human experience. Through disparate forms and strategies, from the long narrative and the brief rhyming lyric to the prose meditation, The Long Meadow looks into and through our troubled world with a poetic sensibility that transforms history into metaphysics and disaster into possibility. Here is the voice of one of contemporary poetry's new masters.