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"These new poems . . . deliver the typical Tate-esque trope de grace to all sanctimonious poses and stodgy cogitation, all verdigris-encrusted mental statuary."--Carolyne Wright, Harvard Review. Winner of the 1994 National Book Award.Amazon.com Review
Winner of the National Book Award in 1994, The Worshipful Company ofFletchers is fresh and startling. Like his doppelgangers Jeff Koons insculpture and Stephen Malkmus in rock music, Tate is a self-consciouslycool comedian of contrivances, devising bizarre situations and dressingthem in a camouflage of the familiar world. To read Tate is to hear asmusic the ongoing negotiations between language and reality. In this bookhis main amusement is a game of categories, culminating in "How the Pope IsChosen":

After a poodle dies
All the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-eleven.
They drink slurpies until one of them throws up
And then he's the new pope.

Customer Reviews (4)

And again, and again, and again...
Over and over I return to this, one of Tate's most powerful collections. In "Worshipful Company of Fletchers", the poems possess that convincing and captivating power to not just construct their own world , but to play within it and stretch the rules of their own making. In the poems, Tate's perceptions and insights make complete sense, and when applied outside the bounds of Sigmar Polke's beautiful painting on the cover, the poignancy of this work resounds even louder. It's often that I return to this collection seeking that artfully piercing insight of Tate, and I am never disappointed.

Required Reading
In James Tate's post-Pulitzer volume, "Worshipful Company of Fletchers," he presents a collection of lyric poetry that offers a constant sense of movement, as though he is guiding readers on a series of speculative journeys with the promise that we could wind up...anywhere.Reading Tate requires trust - trust that his "auto-suggestive" flow of language and ideas will result in a payoff - and it does...there is a payoff of discovery within these pages, his poems.In "Porch Theory," for example, he provides the familiar image of a porch, yet in this fairly short poem, we discover that the porch represents several generations of a family.Like his other works, this piece boasts an effective flow.There are wonderfully warm images of ghost stories, rainy nights, children sleeping, the physical sagging of the porch itself, dinner parties, a sleeping uncle, a playful pet and cocktails being served.Importantly, Tate repeats the visual of wicker across the stories of each generation, tying it with the actions of his characters on the porch:"More children / climb on the wicker couch, and grandmother / stares at the croquet set / in the corner, remembering the parrot / her grandfather brought back from the Pacific."This is important because we realize the wicker is permanent, yet the porch's inhabitants are not.We come to understand that Tate's "Porch Theory" is symbolic of life and death, but that he is celebrating the sense of immortality achieved with the arrival of new generations.This becomes evident midway through the poem with the lines, "The willow itself is finally dying...`Look at those clouds,' / someone says.`The face of God is in there, somewhere.'"Regardless of an individual reader's spirituality, Tate's intention is clear.This is a poem of hope, and it carries the sense of movement and speculative journey that ties it with other poems throughout the book.While "Porch Theory" takes place in the setting of one family's porch, it achieves the promise that we could indeed wind up anywhere because so much occurs within - from its ghost stories to its cocktails and, ultimately, in the memories of the grandmother.Through her, we don't "wind up" on the porch at all, but with the visual of a parrot in transit from the Pacific.This is the payoff.It is why we trust a poet with Tate's intuition and talent, and it is as rewarding as an afternoon of daydreaming on the porch.

"The Nitrogen Cycle"
This book is the key to the closet, where we keep everything that we never use and rarely want. Tate has a keen gift of putting a tear in one eye and a wrinkle in the other. This is where he is most commonly misunderstoond. Afriend of mine, after reading Tate's latest book told me that he felt thepoet was merely trying to show how silly and zany that he could be. Hispoems are often funny and even absurd, but there is a painful sadnesshidden in them. "The Nitrogen Cycle" puts a smile on your face.But, the next minute you are pondering the frail nature of the human mind. This book should be read with plate of cookies and dull knife.

Tate will one day be seen for his incredible talent, we hope
The thing that makes me laugh is that Tate has one of the most unique and insightful ways of looking at the world, and yet he is read so very little. It's a classic case of the public at large not catching on to what isreally happening in this world. This book in particular shows a wealth ofmaturity in his work that didn't really show up until the Eighties. He isable to sythesise the forms of speech that people use to plump themselvesup so well that you can only identify with him as a fellow observer. Inparticular, the poem 'I Got Blindsided' isa high point.

While thefield of study into Tate's work may be a little sparse now, I believe thathe has the skill and attention to the details of American life which willmake him one of the truly great writers to come out of the age of thehippies. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

a reader from berkley ca writes a damn good review.
brilliant reivew. i'm stunne.d get oyt your wallet.

Not Mush
This is a terrific book. You deserve it. The sparks Tate throws riffing these short stories -- better than nothing you've read recently. Trust me. Get out your wallet. ... Read more

Product Description

In his fourteenth collection of poetry, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner James Tate continues exploring his own peculiar brand of poetry, transforming our everyday world, a world where women give birth to wolves, wild babies are found in gardens, and Saint Nick visits on a hot July day. Tate's signature style draws on a marvelous variety of voices and characters, all of which sound vaguely familiar, but are each fantastically unique, brilliant, and eccentric.

Customer Reviews (4)

Fantastic
This book is amazing.It's humorous, unique, and really makes you think.It seems like a new kind of poem.They are almost like short stories.I also want to say this book is bizarre, but in a very good way.Love it!

Unique Book.
Yes, the James Tate poems are up to something.As unique a collection of poems as you will find anywhere.In this book are poems that usurp America.

Special Poetry for Everyone
I had the pleasure of hearing James Tate read some of these poems at a writers' conference and was able to get an autograohed copy of this delightful book. The poems, some of which read like short stories, are multi-layered and you'll want to read them many times.

Never Again the Same
James Tate does it, ie does it and does it. James Tate is up to something. ... Read more

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An award-winning gathering of exquisite poems by a celebrated poet.Amazon.com Review
A selection representative of 25 years of work and nine books, from Lost Pilot (1967) throughReckoner (1986), these poems showcase Tate's talent for surreal entertainmentthat reveals an underlying serious point. He writes: "I am surrounded bythe pieces of this huge/puzzle: here's a piece I call my wife, and/ here's anodd one I call convictions, here's/ conventions, here's collisions,conflagrations . . . " In such high comedy Tate leaves lingeringquestions about the problems of existence, while leaving too a smile on thereader's face. The book won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A wonderful collection
I came across James Tate's poetry in an anthology of Prose Poems, and immediately fell in love with his style. That has spurred me on to get a representative collection of his writing, and by and large I have not been disappointed. This is a wonderful book, with some of the most imaginative use of images and language that I have come across. However, I believe that Tate's prose poems are superior to the rest of his writings, and would really like to read a collection of those. Overall, however, I do recommend this book to anyone interested in more modern poetry.

Hyperbole just isn't enough
James Tate is THE visionary poet of our age and this is his most comprehensive collection to date.

I have read, reread and read again every piece of Tate's writing I have been able to find since I was first exposed to Tate in a class I took with Rodney Jones (another excellent poet) nearly twenty years ago.

Little can compare with:

The Lost Pilot
Coming Down Cleveland Avenue
F@ck the Astronauts

...except the rest of this selected edition which often makes me forget even these masterpieces.

I have gone through 3 copies of this selected edition as I took a copy of it with me everywhere for years.

Bukowski is Old and Tired and Sensationalistic
...and so to equate him w/ Tate is laughable.Your hexes won't work 'round these parts.

The Man stands on the shoulders of Bukowski
(How does he do it?)
(Open letter to James Tate, stalwart UMass prof. :
you won't get any toys this X-mas -- many months away --
because you've leeched off the writings of Ole Buk and this is
funny because you possess the vitality and soul of a
110-pound Alabama sharecropper.)

LOVE IT!!
I had never even heard of James Tate until we began to study him in my 20th century literature class in college.Now I don't know how I had ever not been aware of this man.I love this book and his overall work.Some of my favorite poems from this collection are:The Pet Deer, Goodtime Jesus, and Neighbors.I was also lucky enough to have Tate come to my college last night and read some of his poems that have not yet been published.They are somewhat different from the ones in this book, but are also wonderful.He is an amazingly funny and talented man in real life, and his poetry and craft is some of the most impressive that I have ever read.Definately check it out!! ... Read more

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Memoir of the Hawk creates a world populated by hundreds of characters, believable and strange, tugged at the edges by the unexpected. In the privacy of their homes, who can save them from themselves? In the forests and hills and on the beautiful lakes, what could possibly be wrong? Even in the sweet hometown, with its kindly police, menace lurks in a thousand disguises. Mystery and magic surround this metropolis of the imagination. Once again, James Tate has given us a world of surprising pleasures:

... lost in the interstellar space between teacups in the cupboard, found in the beak of a downy woodpecker, the lovers staring into the void and then jumping over it, flying into their beautiful tomorrows like the heroes of a storm.

Customer Reviews (3)

Enthralling. Fresh. Unique. Pulitzer-worthy.
I'm a not usually a big poetry guy, but this collection of poems enthralled me. So fresh. So unique. For once I agree that a work should have won the Pulitzer, as this one did. Tate combines his fresh images together into poems that surprise you, shock you, inspire you, and ultimately keep you flipping the pages. They're great to be read aloud. Few, if any, rhymes and metered sections, his poems tell short, imagistic tales of proverbial wisdom.

Why do the doves fly out of the priests eyes?
Is the old woman really going to bite your fingers?
Are the toads actually talking?
Why would a mother and son pretend they are Adam and Eve?
Why did they name their flower shop Murder, Inc.?

If you're looking for Walt Whitman, go somewhere else, but if you're in the mood for a more comical William Carlos Williams, a more formal E.E. Cummings, a cleaner Bukowski, then James Tate just might be your guy.

-- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

Compelling/Absurd
I was drawn to this having read Tate's "Worshipful Company of Fletchers" and his "Selected Poems". The former I loved, but the later felt more subdued. Here in "The Memoir of the Hawk" we have another set of poems which truly give the reader joy. I found myself rereading nearly every poem to enjoy the images and unexpected events. I laughed out loud at many of these poems, good solid laughter from the strangeness of the world of the poem and at times from straight comedy.

Not a book for those more aligned to SERIOUS and/or FORMAL poetry. The best comparison I can make is that much of Tate's ideas and images are like the best of "They Might Be Giants" (the band)...lyrical, musical, absurd and at the same time compelling.

Still The Master
I had the idea to write an impassioned defense of this book, but it is too hot, I don't have the energy.And really, it was the wrong idea anyways -- this book doesn't need an impassioned, intellectual defense.

It is a little too long.There are poems in it that are weak and that stand out against the others.But there are poems in this book that are heartbreaking, astonishing, and beautiful. James Tate can still move through a poem nimbly, artfully, and darkly in a way that no one else can. I began reading this book tainted by my contemporaries' cynicism, and the poems rocketed up through the dense cloud of all that and shone brightly.

Not all of them.Of course.

But James Tate, for all his occasional doddering steps, continues to take great leaps across the landscape of the imagination and the world. ... Read more

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Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate returns with his fifteenth book of poetry, an exciting new collection that offers nearly one hundred fresh and thought-provoking pieces that embody Tate's trademark style and voice: his accessibility, his dark humor, and his exquisite sense of the absurd.

Customer Reviews (4)

Great Christmas Present
My son wanted this book for Christmas. I couldn't find it anywhere until I went on Amazon.com and of course, as usual I found it there. I love Amazon.com, you can find everything you're looking for.

We Were Ready
CHERUBIC appears on page 171 in this collection THE GHOST SOLDIERS: POEMS (2008).I thought ahead preparing for the interview."CHERUBIC is by the old James Tate," I said."What do you mean?" said Oprah."Well, it fits on one page and it finishes with a twist," I said."Oh," she said.Obligingly I went on."It comes to one possibly cute definitely thoughtful point," I said.I mean cute to be novel, creative, fun, but not trivial.This went unspoken."Like your head has been hollowed out some to make room for this brand new idea to fit, "she said.I nodded."CHERUBIC is also the one poem in the book, not so prosaic and contains absolutely no dialogue," I said. "Hmm," she said.We were ready to move on.

a great book
It's true that you won't find complex or obtuse poetry in this book as you find in so many other collections, but one thing you will discover that you won't find in those other collections is an enjoyable read. Poetry that's entertaining, now that's a revolutionary concept.

Those who turn their noses to Tate's latest work (all who seem to be fans of his earlier work) tend to read poetry collections that read like books of crossword puzzles. It's the riddle, the exclusivity of the poem that they're after. It's about proving how smart one is, forget communication or any real human emotion.

If you read poetry for this purpose then don't buy this book, but if you want to read poetry that will make you want to read more poetry then I highly suggest this book.

The Old Gray Mare . . .
May 7, 2008
It's a bit sad that this book has been out so long and I am the first to review it.For more than twenty years I have been reading Mr. Tate's work, and I would suggest that those interested in Tate should concentrate on the early work.The best of it appears in Constant Defender and Absences, in my opinion.Then a steady decline.I'll probably buy the next book because I'm addicted to his voice.All that said, Ghost Soldiers in another disappointment.Tate turns his craft almost obsessively with thinly veiled attacks on the military, the government and the church.He has weighed in on the "culture war" at the expense of his own gift. A paean to the Weather Underground is really too much.His quips about the President read like bumper stickers. He places a rosary in women's underwear: tee-hee.I'm not in the least offended or necessarily even in disagreement with his politics, but disappointed that he has inserted them into his work in such a juvenile way.If you're going to throw ordnance, throw something bigger than fire-crackers.

There are several very good offerings in the 200 page book, but not enough to justify more than two stars.
... Read more

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Clear and insightful poetry on our relationship to the given world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Proximity to Himself
This is James Tate's best book of poetry. It's very telling that the author of the review that has the corny pun in its title admits that this book is too real for him. Tate uses his "surrealism" to approach reality, to attempt to bridge the distance he feels from loved ones, or from himself. He explores the world around him--real, or imagined--by describing it, by cataloguing its details, by recording the absurd, mundane, or tragic events that transpire. He shares his uncompromising vision of the world around him (and/or inside him) however disturbing his findings may be. The speakers of the poems are often engaged in an almost desperate quest to connect with another, as in the poem "Peggy in the Twilight." However, as in that poem, the speaker's efforts to find satisfaction or love are thwarted: Peggy, the tragic and lovable beauty the speaker meets at a party, turns out to be a figment of his imagination. The host informs him, "There's no one here by that name." The poet explains: "And so my love life began." Most of the poems appear absurd or comic initially ("Peggy spent half of each day trying to wake up, and/ the other half preparing for sleep."), but, on closer examination, one finds that these poems are filled with yearning, anxiety, curiousity, terror, hilarity, courage, technical ingenuity, and a deep insight into the world we inhabit and the relationships we struggle to forge or preserve. The humor, playfulness, and risk-taking in Tate's best poems often prevents readers from appreciating the depth of these works. Tate was in top form when he published this collection in the early 1990's.

Resonant and resolute
James Tate is not a surrealist; he is a lyric poet with an imagination. Because the imagination has been on trial in this country for the past decade, people label anything the least bit odd "surrealist" whenthey don't understand what they're trying to confront or when they'reafraid of what the imagination, when presented by someone as brilliant asTate, can unleash.

The title poem is one of many effective, poignant, andtender poems in this book.While not Tate's funniest or strangestcollection, Distance from Loved Ones is emotionally charged and completelywithout pretense. It contains half a dozen of the best poets written by anAmerican in the past 20 years.

Small "tate-ers" for a poet of his caliber.
James Tate's most recent offering, "Distance fromLoved Ones," hit bookstores recently, after muchhype and anticipation.Up to this point, I hadsuspended my judgment on the pernicious poet,but now I nolonger straddle the fence on this issue. The title poem promises insightand melancholy, but quickly strays into a graphic erotic narrativeinvolving his last several pets (all of which diedmysterious deaths). Theassociative peregrinationshe offers attempt to travel the road betweentheheart and the mind but never make it past histhrobbing libido.Iunderstand that he is a "surrealist," but this slab ofperversions is muchtoo real for me.Tate is an unholy cross between Neitzche and Andy Griffith, and frankly, the only wayyou may possiblyglean something from this tour de FARCE is if you don your standard issuegoth trenchcoat and hit the local coffee house. ... Read more

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The Route as Briefed collects prose by Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Tate. It is an amazingly eclectic collection, offering essays, interviews, short-short stories, memoirs, and even a recipe for squirrel brains in black butter. The essays and interviews touch on themes ranging from poetic influences to MFA programs, and from the role of humor in poetry to the nature of regional writing. The fiction selections--none more than four pages long--are as engaging as their titles, e.g., Despair Ice Cream, Running for Your Life, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee, Pie, and A Cloud of Dust. The memoirs include Tate's journal entries during a trip to Spain, and a long piece on the father he never met, killed in action during World War II.
In typical Tate style, the book continually straddles the line between fiction and autobiography, entertaining readers with amusing accounts of the poet's own experiences while drawing on these to narrate the fictional stories as well.
James Tate is Professor of Poetry, University of Massachusetts. He is the author of a number of books of poetry, including Worshipful Company of Fletchers: Poems, 1994; Selected Poems, 1991; Distance from Loved Ones, 1990. He has received several awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1992.
... Read more

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Speakers in James Tate's poems are and are not like those we know: a man's meditation on gardening renders him witless; another man traps theories and then lets them loose in a city park; a nun confides that "it was her / cowboy pride that got her through"; a gnome's friend inhabits a world where "a great eschatological ferment is at work. "Shroud of the Gnome" is a bravura performance in Tate's signature style: playful, wicked, deliriously sober, charming, and dazzling. Here, once again, one of America's most masterful poets celebrates the inexplicable in his own strange tongue.Amazon.com Review
Reading James Tate's collection of poetry, The Shroud ofthe Gnome, is a little like reading Lewis Carroll's more inspiredfits of nonsense minus the rhyming and with much sharper teeth.Take,for example, Tate's poem, "Restless Leg Syndrome," in whichthe narrator's leg "flies around the room kicking stuff"

It kicked the scrimshaw collection,
yes it did. It kicked the ocelot,
which was rude and uncalled for,
and yes hurtful. It kicked
the guacamole right out of its bowl,
which made for a grubby
and potentially dangerous workplace.
I was out testing the new speed bump
when it kicked the Viscountess,
which she probably deserved...

Beneath Tate'splayfulness, there's a serious mind at work. This man believes thatpoetry is essential to a well-rounded life. In "DreamOn" he marvels that "Some people go their whole liveswithout ever writing a single poem," and after enumerating themany ills a society without poetry suffers--everything from delinquentchildren to a dog that "howls all night, lonely and starving formore poetry in his life"--he describes the blessings of poetry,the "pure ordinariness of life seeking, through poetry, abenediction...." There may be many people in this world who havenever written a poem; fortunately, James Tate is not one of them. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The best Tate yet...
It is with the Shroud of the Gnome that Tate seems to have matured-- here is the blending of his poignant early voice and the talent of the later comic linguist.In the poem "Smart" he employs imaginativelycatchy opening lines: "I had a theory for a while, but I had to let itgo. / It was wasting away in captivity. / It sat there in the cage of mybrain and wouldn't eat." This is Tate's gift for rare, humorousmetaphor once more.Slightly off-center and yet understandable enough thatyou can identify the image as that of a poem never fully written orrealized.

In "Dream On" he calls to the poet and the poetrylover alike: "Some people go their whole lives / without ever writinga single poem. / Extraordinary people who don't hesitate / to cutsomebody's heart or skull open." In "At the Days End Motel"he reflects on life in lines like: "Down the road, about a quarter ofa mile, a tractor trailer / jackknifed and took a station wagon and aminibus / with it straight to hell where they had some / remarkably goodcarrot cake."Here Tate is again the thought provoking poet.Surrealand abstract language create dense imagery that enhances the already edgysubstance of Tate's language.

Tate has been called a standup comic ofpoetry, yet this is, to me, wherein his genius lies.If he can make uslook closer at our world, our limitations and our potentials and at thesame time tease us with a fresh look at our own language, then he deservesour attention.

Better than taking your mother to the prom.
Trying to live without this book is like trying to walk in shoes without your feet in them.Meaning, each poem is like a little exhortation to fall asleep at crucial intersections.Dream replacement therapy.You willabsolutely love this book, or we'll come and stuff you full of numinalcheesecake. ... Read more

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Interesting family behavior of the American alligator. Winner of a Children's Choice Award. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Educational and fun
My 4 year old loves this series of books from Suzanne Tate. It is a great way to teach them about nature while having fun, and learning to read at the same time. I learned a lot from these books also. ... Read more

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Story and facts from Suzanne's exciting research at a pelican rookery. ... Read more

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All about a spiny-skinned animal, known also as a starfish, that is a marvel of nature. ... Read more

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Helpful humans rescue two young dolphins and take them to a science center for rehabilitation. ... Read more

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Now with an introduction from celebrated poet James Tate, Riding the Earthboy 40 is the only volume of poetry written by acclaimed Native American novelist James Welch. The title of the book refers to the forty acres of Montana land Welch’s father once leased from a Blackfeet family called Earthboy. This land and its surroundings shaped the writer’s worldview as a youth, its rawness resonates in the vitality of his elegant poetry, and his verse shows a great awareness of a moment in time, of a place in nature, and of the human being in context. Deeply evoking the specific Native American experience in Montana, Welch’s poems nonetheless speak profoundly to all readers. With its new introduction, this vital work that has influenced so many American writers is certain to capture a new generation of readers. ... Read more

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Amazing facts about moon jellies, animals with no heart, bones or brain. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great, cute book
This book allow kids to learn while having fun.
It provides many facts about Jellyfish while making kids smile.

I love the whole series. ... Read more

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Many facts about the spotted eagle ray, an elegant creature that leaps from the water and soars like an eagle. ... Read more

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The interesting story of an animal that survives because of its many blue eyes. ... Read more

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A tale of an old bird whose wise ways save his flock. This charming story teaches children respect of elders. ... Read more