Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate: Poems

by James Tate, Michael Earl Craig (Read by)

Overview

An essential collection of James Tate’s extraordinary poems that will captivate today’s readers, with a foreword by Terrance Hayes

Celebrating James Tate’s work as it transcends convention, time, and everything that tells us, “No, you can’t do that,” Hell, I Love Everybody gives us the poet at his best, his most intimate, hopeful, inventive, and brilliant. John Ashbery called Tate the “poet of possibilities,” and this collection records forays into possibilities for American poetry’s future. With a foreword by Terrance Hayes, it is sure to give readers new and old a lasting collection of favorites.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212699778
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

James Tate's poems have been awarded the National Book Award, the Pulitzer

Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Yale

Younger Poets Award, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and

have been translated across the globe. Tate was a member of the American

Academy of Arts and Letters; his many collections include The Lost Pilot, The

Oblivion Ha-Ha, Absences, Distance from Loved Ones, Worshipful Company

of Fletchers, and The Ghost Soldiers. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he made his

home in Pelham, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

The poems of James Tate will keep speaking to people for a very long time into the future, because they never stop caring and never stop having fun.”

author of Liberation Day George Saunders

★ 09/18/2023

Quintessential poems by virtuoso of absurdity Tate (The Government Lake: Last Poems) are woven into a whimsical, rollicking, and utterly jarring retrospective that showcases an unparalleled mind. Tate is famed for narratives that are set in the familiar and develop imaginatively, even chaotically: in one poem, strangers invite a jazz musician to a lavish party, only to reveal that he is their annual human sacrifice due to his lack of contribution to society. In another, an applicant interviewing to be an ice cream trucker driver is told that extensive military experience is required. Elsewhere, a woman instigates a bloody fight at her book club, then gets drinks with her victims. The poet explores social standards and fallacies, the terrifying beauty of nature, and what it means to live a life devoid of poetry. Tate’s effervescent imagery assuages the heart: “It is late morning,/ and my forehead is alive with shadows,/ Some bats rock back and forth/ to the rhythm of my humming,/ The mimosa flutters with bees./ This is a house of unwritten poems,/ This is where I am unborn.” Tenacious, surreal, impish, and soul mending, these poems invite the reader into a transcendent world. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"The poems of James Tate will keep speaking to people for a very long time into the future, because they never stop caring and never stop having fun. They are, to my ear, lovely verbal reminders that everything should be regarded as mysterious and dear." — George Saunders, author of Liberation Day and Lincoln in the Bardo

“A brilliant collection of poems from one of the most singular minds ever to have graced the page. Not only does this book exemplify Tate's unmatched imagination, but it also celebrates his intelligence, tenderness, and attention. This book is an absolute must-read for any poetry lover.”  — Ada Limón, author of The Carrying and Bright Dead Things 

"Quintessential poems by virtuoso of absurdity Tate are woven into a whimsical, rollicking, and utterly jarring retrospective that showcases an unparalleled mind...Tenacious, surreal, impish, and soul mending, these poems invite the reader into a transcendent world." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher