Synopses & Reviews
Joseph Stroud was all but unknown when, in 1998, Below Cold Mountain appeared. As reviewers took note of this gorgeous book by a reclusive poet, Stroud’s poems found a larger audience: Garrison Keillor read them on NPR and his poems were reprinted in The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. The sentiment shared by readers and booksellers was one of discovery.
In Joseph Stroud’s new book, his poetic imagination infuses landscapes, hard travel, and commonplace objects. Whether trekking through Mexico or Vietnam, living in the High Sierras, or “painting paradise” in the voice of Renaissance painter Giotto, Stroud’s lyrics, prose poems, elegies, and odes articulate a journey of uncommon attention and startling perception.
Joseph Stroud lives near Santa Cruz, California.
Synopsis
Lyrics, elegies, prose poems, and odes about hard travel and beloved landscapes, from Peru to the Sierra Nevada.
Synopsis
"Like all of the best poets, Stroud makes the earth again consolable."--Jim Harrison
Synopsis
Poetry. Sporting the moniker of a Lannan Literary Selection, Joseph Stroud's latest collection, according to W.S. Merwin, "differs in form and approach and the surprise seems to come from another quarter" than his previous and critically-lauded collection BELOW COLD MOUNTAIN (available as well from SPD). "But again it is the recurring revelation that poetry brings to us, the crystal of our ordinary days. Mr. Stroud's poetry comes from the clear source."
About the Author
Joseph Stroud was born in Glendale, California, 1943, and educated at the University of San Francisco, California State University at Los Angeles, and San Francisco State University. His work earned a Pushcart Prize in 2000. He was a finalist for the Northern California Book Critics Award in 2005. In 2006 he was selected by the Poet Laureate of the United States for a Witter Bynner Fellowship in poetry from the Library of Congress. He divides his time between his home in Santa Cruz on the California coast and a cabin in the Sierra Nevada.