The Government Lake: Last Poems

The stunning, startling collection that is also the last work from a major poet

A woman named Mildred starts laying eggs after feathers from wild poultry begin coming down the chimney. A man becomes friends with a bank robber who abducts him and eventually rues his captor’s death. A baby is born transparent.

James Tate’s work, filled with unexpected turns and deadpan exaggeration, “fanciful and grave, mundane and transcendent,” (New York Times) has been among the most defining and significant of our time. In his last collection before his death in 2015, Tate’s dark yet whimsical humor, his emotional acuity, and his keen ear for the absurd are on full display in prose poems that finely constructed and lyrical, surrealistic and provocative.

With The Government Lake, James Tate reminds us why he is one of the great poets of our age and one of the true masters of the form. 

The stunning, startling collection that is also the last work from a major poet

A rat climbs onto the desk of a bored office worker. A family dog never stops coming back to life. Every prisoner on earth is freed. A man becomes friends with a bank robber who abducts him. A baby is born transparent.

James Tate’s work, filled with unexpected turns and deadpan exaggeration, “fanciful and grave, mundane and transcendent” (New York Times), has been among the most defining and significant of our time. In his last collection, written before his death in 2015, Tate’s dark humor, his emotional acuity, and his keen ear are on full display in prose poems that are finely constructed, lyrical, and provocative.

With The Government Lake, James Tate reminds us why he is one of the great poets of our age and a true master.

“The rare American poet who managed to make poems that were at once fanciful and grave, mundane and transcendent. . . . His work is singular in American poetry for marrying goofball humor and childish jouissance to a lyricism that never seems cheap or self-serious-an unusual achievement.” - New York Times Book Review

“James Tate never ceases to astonish, dismay, delight, confuse, tickle, and generally improve the quality of our lives.” - John Ashbery

“A poem out of nothing…is Tate’s genius…Just about anything can happen next in this kind of poetry and that is its attraction.” - Charles Simic