Description

The seventeenth book of verse from one of America’s finest and most acclaimed contemporary poets—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Capturing his inimitable voice—provocative, amusing, understated, and riotous all at once—the poems in Dome of the Hidden Pavilion demonstrate James Tate at his finest. Innovative and fresh, they range in subject from a talking blob to a sobering reminiscence of a war and its aftereffects.

Though they are diverse in scope, a theme of dialogue and communication—and often miscommunication—links these poems. Accessible yet subtly surrealist, filled with dark wit, dry humor, and a deceptive simplicity, Dome of the Hidden Pavilion confirms Tate’s continuing relevance as one of the most celebrated American poets of the modern age.

About the Author

James Tate was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1943. His first book, The Lost Pilot, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1967. Tate wrote nineteen books and won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the Wallace Stevens Award. He served as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tate lived in Pelham, Massachusetts, and taught for years at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Praise For…

“Dome is Tate at his restless, relentless best - leaving many questions unanswered, and no answer unquestioned.” — Boston Globe

“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