The Middle Ages

A new collection from a Whiting award and National Poetry Series winner.

Thomas Lux has called Roger Fanning "an American original...[whose] poems are so pure, so piercing, so simple, so distilled that reading him is like taking a drunk-with-language dive into a moonlit lake on a night you believe you will live forever!" Fanning writes surprising and evocative poems that are filled with humor and ingenuity; Mary Karr says he "tunes us in to those minuscule instants of revelation that can keep life from being a long zombie convention." This new collection of poems, Fanning's first in more than ten years, in part chronicles a period of time when he suffered a break with reality, and continues his investigations into the drudgeries, the disappointments, and the joy of our daily lives.

Roger Fanning's first collection of poetry, The Island Itself, was selected by Michael Ryan for the 1992 National Poetry Series. Fanning has taught at Syracuse University and currently teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Seattle with his wife and son.