Selected poems, 1969-1981

the long version

[from the back cover] <p>In The American Book Review Diane Wakoski wrote of Richard Shelton's fourth book, The Bus to Veracruz: "I think Shelton speaks for the needs of a poet, or poetry, in the 20th century. [His] metaphorical desert is the arid world of tv and popular culture, of instant physical gratification. His prison is the body which requires constant stimulation. His poetry represents a strong American philosophical response to those realities. The transcendence of the body through the imagination... If this isn't the poetry of prophecy, I don't know what it is. America, the 20th century, we need more of it."</p> <p>In Selected Poems, 1969-1981, Richard Shelton has brought together the best of his previously published work as well as a selection of new poems. It is the work of a poet who rises above the narrowness of current fashions and schools, the book of a major American poet.</p> SONORA FOR SALE this is the land of gods in exile they are fragile and without pride they require no worshippers we come down a white road in the moonlight dragging our feet like innocents to find the guilty already arrived and in possession of everything we see the stars as they were years ago but for us it is the future they warn us too late we are here we cannot turn back soon we hold out our hands full of money this is the desert it is all we have left to destroy