Poetry. For James Richardson, poetry is serious and speculative play for both intellect and imagination. BY THE NUMBERS is striking for its range of line and movement, for its microlyrics, crypto-quatrains, "ten-second essays," and the twist and snap of aphorisms. Drawing from myriad fables—Ovidian, Shakespearean, georgic, and scientific—Richardson makes familiar scenes strange enough to provoke new and startling insights.

Author City: PRINCETON, NJ USA

James Richardson is the author of the best-selling VECTORS: APHORISMS & TEN-SECOND ESSAYS (Ausable Press, 2001). His poetry includes Reservations, Second Guesses, As If, which was chosen by Amy Clampitt for the National Poetry Series, A Suite for Lucretians, How Things Are, INTERGLACIAL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS & APHORISMS (Ausable Press, 2004), and BY THE NUMBERS (Copper Canyon Press, 2010). He is the author of two critical studies, Thomas Hardy: The Poetry of Necessity, and Vanishing Lives: Tennyson, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Yeats. The recipient of the Cecil Hemley and Robert H. Winner Prizes from the Poetry Society of America and fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Princeton University.

Reviews and Other Links
Chosen by Publishers Weekly as One of the Best Books of 2010
John Deming @ Coldfront
Dana Jennings @ The New York Times