X: Poems

Something has to be true enough to be

Taken for granted.

In the hospital I saw

An old man

Caressing the face of an old woman.

This same man, young, caressed her face

In just that way.

That's the stillness

At the center of change—

A sadness worth dying for, I swear—

There is no other.

—from "Dying into What I've Done"

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."—The Nation

"In James Galvin we have a superior poet."—American Book Review

"Galvin's poems have the virtues of precise observation and original language, yes, but what he also brings to the table is a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make the slightest of his poems an architectural pleasure."—Harvard Review

James Galvinhas published five collections of poetry, most recently Resurrection Update: Collected Poems 1975-1997, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Lenore Marshall/The Nation Prize. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed prose book, The Meadow and a novel, Fencing the Sky. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, where he works as a rancher part of each year, and in Iowa City, where he is a member of the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.