Lloyd Schwartz

"There is no one quite like Lloyd Schwartz, whose unique combination of comedy and pathos is rare in contemporary American poetry. Over the years and books, Schwartz has developed a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, producing poems that are hilarious in their depiction of unsettling social situations, while still managing to find the kernel of poignancy buried in everyday encounters. He is a master of the speech-driven style of verse, which is based...

Called "the master of the poetic one-liner" by the New York Times, acclaimed poet and critic Lloyd Schwartz takes his characteristic tragicomic view of life to some unexpected and disturbing places in this, his fourth book of poetry. Here are poignant and comic poems about personal loss--the mysterious disappearance of his oldest friend, his mother's failing memory, a precious gold ring gone missing--along with uneasy love poems and poems about family,...

Elizabeth Bishop's prose is not as well-known as her poetry, but she was a dazzling and compelling prose writer, too, as the publication of her letters has shown. Her stories often border on memoir, and vice versa. From her college days, she could find the most astonishing yet thoroughly apt metaphors to illuminate her ideas. This volume--edited by the poet, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, and Bishop scholar Lloyd Schwartz--includes virtually all her...