Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems

A powerful new collection from an award-winning poet Robert Wrigley has become one of his generation's most accomplished poets, renowned for his irony, power, and lucid style and for his ability to fuse narrative and lyrical impulses. Like its namesake—Robert Burton's seventeenth-century examination of human thoughts and emotions—Wrigley's new collection means to examine our world through the lens of melancholia. From imagined war memorials to insomniac chickens; from Descartes' lost daughter to a dreaming tree; from King Kong to Rush Limbaugh; and from Anna Karenina to a man named Lucy Doolin (short for Lucifer), these are poems that elegize and celebrate that most beautiful, exasperating, joyous, miserable, and perfectly imperfect of all creatures—the human being.Robert Wrigley is the author of eight collections of poetry, including In the Bank of Beautiful Sins, a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize; Reign of Snakes, winner of the 2000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Lives of the Animals, winner of the 2004 Poet's Prize; and, most recently, Beautiful Country. He teaches at the University of Idaho and lives with his wife, the writer Kim Barnes, near Moscow, Idaho.