The poems of J.V. Cunningham

the long version

The lifework in verse of one of the finest and liveliest American poets of the twentieth century, this collection of the poems of J.V. Cunningham (1911-1985) documents the poet's development from his early days as an experimental modernist during the Depression to his later emergence as a master of the classical "plain style," distinguished by its wit, feeling, and subtlety. Often identified with the epigram - a genre in which he excelled as distinctively as Johnson, Herrick, and LandorCunningham also wrote in a wide range of other poetic forms and was as well a remarkable translator. This volume incorporates the materials of his 1971 Collected Poems and Epigrams and adds many of his later poems and translations. Included, too, are some interesting early pieces that appeared in periodicals but have never before been collected in a book.