Far Side Of The Earth: Poems

Widely considered one of the finest poets of his generation, Tom Sleigh brings to his fifth collection his trademark intensity and craftsmanship, mixing the streetwise edginess of popular culture with Greek and Latin references, myth, and dramatic lyrics. Passionately comprehensive in its understanding of contemporary reality, Far Side of the Earth is unique in its moral gravitas, consolatory power, and strangeness of vision.

"This fifth, and best, volume from Sleigh...will (at the least) cement Sleigh's reputation as a poet of modern wounds, and may well open him up for larger readerships -- or land him a major award." Publishers Weekly

"In his best poems Sleigh holds everything together by matching his intense emotion with skillfully worked out metaphors." --David Orr The New York Times Book Review

"Tom Sleigh's nine-part sequence, "New York American Spell 2001," which appears in his excellent new book...is one of the most genuinely interesting, oblique and forceful post-Sept. 11 poems I've read." --Edward Hirsch

The Washington Post

"Revs both diction and syntax to produce his best work yet...A sequence of poems about September 11th asserts the importance of poetry itself."

The New Yorker

"[Sleigh's] poems -- tense, philosophical, relentlessly physical -- feel and sound almost carved from language, sculpted from stone." --Robin Becker, American Poetry Review