A remarkable collection representing early and recent poems by David St. John, the critically acclaimed author of Hush, The Shore, and No Heaven.

GUITAR

I have always loved the word guitar.

I have no memories of my father on the patio

At dusk, strumming a Spanish tune,

Or my mother draped in that fawn wicker chair

Polishing her flute;

I have no memories of your song, distant Sister

Heart, of those steel strings sliding

All night through the speaker of the car radio

Between Tucumcari and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Though I've never believed those stories

Of gypsy cascades, stolen hoses, castanets,

And stars, of Airstream trailers and good fortune.

Though I've never met Charlie Christian, though

I've danced the floors of cold longshoremen's halls,

Though I've waited with the overcoats at the rear

Of concerts for lute, mandolin, and two guitars ?

More than the music I love scaling its woven

Stairways, more than the swirling chocolate of wood

I have always loved the word guitar.

David St. John has been honored, over the course of his career, with many of the most significant prizes for poets, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Prix de Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His work has been published in countless literary magazines, including The New Yorker, Paris Reviews, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Antaeus, Harper's, and The New Republic, and has been widely anthologized. He has taught creative writing at Oberlin College and Johns Hopkins University and currently teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.