750 S. Spaulding Ave., Suite 112
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Essays, Manifestos, Statements, Speeches, Maxims, Epistles, Diaristic Jottings, Narratives, Natural histories, Poems, Plays, Performances, Ramblings, Revelations, and all such ephemera as may appear necessary to bring society into a slight tremolo of confusion and fright at least.

New and Selected Poems 1958-1998

Gilbert Sorrentino

Although best known for his fiction—including important novels such as Little Casino, Gold Fools, The Orangery, Aberration of Starlight, and Mulligan Stew—Gilbert Sorrentino is also a distinguished poet, the author of over eight volumes of poetry. The current volume reprints his Selected Poems 1958-1980 and includes 27 new poems and poem sequences published since 1980.

Sorrentino’s poetry is at once beautifully imagistic and filled with the magic of startling language. His works are precise and yet dazzlingly abstract, and some use, to great effect, Oulipian devices. Satiric landscapes like “A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Bay Area” are alternated with brilliant recastings of older forms, as in “Strambotto” and “Depression Canzone.” Taken together, these poems reveal Sorrentino as a major contemporary American poet.