David Baker, acclaimed for his combination of "visionary scope" (Gettysburg Review) and "emotional intensity" (Georgia Review), is one of contemporary poetry's most gifted lyric poets. In Swift, he gathers poems from eight collections, including his masterful latest, Scavenger Loop (2015); the prize-winning, intimate travelogues of Never-Ending Birds (2009); and the complications of history and home in Changeable Thunder (2001). Opening the volume are fifteen new poems that continue Baker's growth in form and voice as he investigates the death of parents, the loss of homeland and a widening natural history, not only of his beloved Midwest but of the tropical flora and fauna of a Caribbean island.

Together, these poems showcase the evolution of Baker's distinct eco-poetic conscience, his mastery of forms both erotic and elegiac and his keen eye for the shifting landscapes of passion, heartbreak and renewal. With equal curiosity and candour, Baker explores the many worlds we all inhabit-from our most intimate relationships to the wider social worlds of neighbourhoods, villages and our complex national identity, to the environmental community we all share.

With his dazzling formal restlessness and lifelong devotion to landscapes both natural and human on full display, David Baker demonstrates why he has been called "the most expansive and moving poet to come out of the American Midwest since James Wright" (Marilyn Hacker).

About the Author
David Baker's many honors include fellowships and awards from the Poetry Society of America, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. The recipient of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, Baker teaches at Denison University and lives in Granville, Ohio.

Reviews
"[Baker's] work evinces the moral courage of keeping still in the landscape... He is heir to such writers as Henry David Thoreau... and Robert Frost... To read Baker's poems collected in this way is to appreciate the full range of their formal resources, their attunement to cycles and processes rather than to mere outcomes and effects." -- The New Yorker
"This career retrospective reveals Baker as a peerless poet of the natural world." -- Editors' Choice - The New York Times Book Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780393358179
Author David Baker
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 166g
Dimensions(mm) 211mm * 140mm * 15mm