Synopses & Reviews
A touching, angry, and hilarious anthology of the many facets of ruptured romance With breakup and divorce rates so high in the United States, who wouldn't want to read an eclectic volume of poems on the subject? Therapeutic and transformative, edgy yet sincere, enlightening, wideranging, female and male, gay and straight, innocent and guilty, It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup incorporates work from as many different perspectives as possible in order to explore the exquisite pain of heartbreak. Such top-shelf contributors as National Book Award finalist Kim Addonizio, bestselling author Denis Johnson, former poet laureate Mark Strand, Edward Hirsch, Maxine Kumin, David Lehman, and many others proudly offer up their wisdom on the various pains (and humors) of heartbreak. In this stunning collection, readers will not find false hope, but the real hope of genuine sympathy in love, hate, fury, and recuperation.
Review
"This collection . . . gathers many of the poems that have helped Williams (a poet himself, with two books to his name) through his rooms of anguish over the years. Happily, theyre pretty great." -The New York Times
Review
"A fine new anthology . . . featuring terrific poets . . . Williams is as good a prose writer as he is a poet. Get hold of this guys stuff and read it." -Entertainment Weekly
Review
"A fine new anthology...featuring terrific poets...Williams is as good a prose writer as he is a poet. Get hold of this guy's stuff and read it." --
Entertainment Weekly "Jerry Williams, has had some experience with romantic disappointment, as he details in his slightly painful introduction...This collection is split into three sections - 'One Foot Out the Door,' 'In the Middle of the Storm' and 'The Aftermath' - and it gathers many of the poems that have helped Williams (a poet himself, with two books to his name) through his rooms of anguish over the years. Happily, they're pretty great." - PaperCuts
"In It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup today's big contemporary poets make breaking up and even divorce sound painfully beautiful. You'll want to read with a box of tissues, a pint of chocolate ice cream and sappy love songs playing in the background." - Lemondrop
Synopsis
It's Not You, It's Me is a poetry anthology--at once amusing, angry, sweet, and bitter--that gives a fresh voice to the all-too-familiar experience of ending a relationship. Williams compiled over 90 poems by contemporary writers including Denis Johnson and Kim Addonizio, as well as former poets laureate Robert Hass, Maxine Kumin, and Mark Strand, whose comforting and healing words dragged him out of his breakup-induced depression. We have all been through a breakup, but these poems have created an art out of heartbreak: sharing their wisdom on the pain of the flip side of romance, and poking fun at the mess we become at the mercy of love.
Synopsis
Award-winning poet Jerry Williams is an expert in breaking up, and he credits his survival to the careful words of poets who have loved and lost before him.
About the Author
Jerry Williams teaches creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College. He is also the author of the collections of poems Casino of the Sun and Admission. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Pleiades, and many other journals. He lives in New York City.