Poetry. At the first onset of suprise I read it carefull twice, the second time as if reliving a grand feast, course by course, seeing the food re-enlivened by the infusion of imagination into memory. I must say I was dumbfounded. I don't recall when a poet unknown to me has struck me so deeply. I had the terribly inaccurate sensation that I was quite young again and reading one of history's good poets for the first time. The book made nearly all the manuscripts and galleys that pass my way seem like thin gruel indeed. What an achievement. There is range and amplitude here found only among the very best. There aren't a few high points but dozens. We don't have here a few isolated mountains but a whole range, a cordillera. Like all of the best poets, Stroud makes the earth again consolable (Jim Harrison). Joseph Stroud was born in 1943. He is the author of SIGNATURES (Boa Edtions) also avaialble from SPD. He lives part of the time in Santa Cruz and part of the time at Shay Creek on the east side of the Sierras.

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.