Nouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems

A major new collection from one of our best loved, most celebrated, and most original poets

Deeply personal but also expansive in its imaginative scope, Nouns & Verbs brings together thirty-five years of writing from Campbell McGrath, one of America’s most highly lauded poets. Offering a hint of where he’s headed while charting the territory already explored, McGrath gives us startlingly inventive new poems while surveying his previous work—lyric poems, prose poems, and a searing episodic personal epic, “An Odyssey of Appetite,” exploring America’s limitless material and spiritual hungers.

Nothing is too large or small to remain untouched by McGrath’s voracious intellect and deep empathy—everything from Japanese eggplant to a can of Schaefer beer to the smokestacks of Chicago comes in for a close and perceptive look even as McGrath crosses borders and boundaries, investigating the enduring human experiences of love and loss.

A book that stands on its own solid foundation, Nouns & Verbs captures the voice and vision of a truly singular poet.

A MAJOR NEW COLLECTION FROM ONE OF OUR BEST LOVED, MOST CELEBRATED, AND MOST ORIGINAL POETS

Deeply personal but also expansive in its imaginative scope, Nouns & Verbs brings together thirty-five years of writing from Campbell McGrath, one of America’s most highly lauded poets. Offering a hint of where he’s headed while charting the territory already explored, McGrath gives us startlingly inventive new poems while surveying his previous work—lyric poems, prose poems, and a searing episodic personal epic, “An Odyssey of Appetite,” that explores America’s limitless material and spiritual hungers.

Nothing is too large or small to remain untouched by McGrath’s voracious intellect and deep empathy—everything from Japanese eggplant to a can of Schaefer beer to the smokestacks of Chicago comes in for a close and perceptive look even as McGrath crosses borders and boundaries, investigating the enduring human experiences of love and loss. A book that stands on its own solid foundation, Nouns & Verbs captures the voice and vision of a truly singular poet.

“Nouns & Verbs is a lifelong manifesto on joy and vigor, a message in a bottle for all of us who ‘scrabble within the skin of time / like mice in the belly of a boa constrictor.’” - Tracy K. Smith

“A book of extraordinary poetic energy...We finish this book with the sense that we have traveled far and wide in our country with a guide who is by turns fascinated and distressed, amazed by its rich materials and deeply disappointed with what has been done with them.” - Carl Dennis

“Campbell McGrath never fails to capture the velocity of America ‘in all its splendid yearning to be lost and longing to belong.’... Nouns & Verbs reminds us of McGrath’s singular, essential stature in contemporary American poetry.” - Terrance Hayes

“McGrath’s absorbing, amusing, and reflective traveling music entices us on the road yet again.” - Booklist (starred review)