The Ghost Soldiers: Poems

by James Tate

Overview

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet James Tate returns with his fifteenth book of poetry, an exciting new collection that offers nearly one hundred fresh and thought-provoking pieces that embody Tate's trademark style and voice: his accessibility, his dark humor, and his exquisite sense of the absurd.

Tate's work is stark—he writes in clear, everyday language—yet his seemingly simple and macabre stories are layered with broad and trenchant meaning. His characters are often lost or confused, his settings bizarre, his scenarios brilliantly surreal. Opaque, inscrutable people float through a dreamlike world where nothing is as it seems. The Ghost Soldiers offers resounding proof, once again, that Tate stands alone in American poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061734434
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

James Tate's poems have been awarded the National Book Award, the Pulitzer

Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Yale

Younger Poets Award, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and

have been translated across the globe. Tate was a member of the American

Academy of Arts and Letters; his many collections include The Lost Pilot, The

Oblivion Ha-Ha, Absences, Distance from Loved Ones, Worshipful Company

of Fletchers, and The Ghost Soldiers. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he made his

home in Pelham, Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt

The Ghost Soldiers

Chapter One

Treason

The man that was following me looked like a government agent, so I turned around and walked up to him and said, "Why are you following me?" He said, "I'm not following you. I'm an insurance agent walking to work." "Well, pardon me, my mistake," I said. "Have you done something wrong, unpatriotic, or are you just paranoid?" he said. "I've done nothing wrong, certainly not unpatriotic, and I'm not paranoid," I said. "Well, nobody's ever mistaken me for a government agent before," he said. "I'm sorry," I said. "You have something weighing down on your conscience, don't you?" he said. "No, I don't. I'm just vigilant," I said. "Like a good criminal," he said. "Would you stop talking to me like that," I said. "I don't want to have anything to do with you." "You've committed some kind of treason and they're going to get you," he said. "You're out of your mind," I said. "Benedict Arnold, that's who you are," he said. "I'm going to a peace rally if that's okay with you," I said. "Oh, a peacenik. That's the same as treason," he said. "No, it isn't," I said. "Yes it is," he said. "No." "Yes." "No." "Yes." We reached his office door. "I really hate to say good-bye to you. Would you like to have lunch tomorrow?" he said. "I'd be delighted," I said. "Good. Then Sadie's Café at noon," he said. "Noon at Sadie's," I said.

The Ghost Soldiers. Copyright ? by James Tate. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

Over the past several books, the prolific Pulitzer Prize winner Tate (Return to the City of White Donkeys)has been inching toward the invention of a new kind of American poem, a hybrid of prose poetry (though he's got loose, almost arbitrary line breaks), fable, surrealism and a sort of outsider folk poetry. These chatty, narrative works humorously treat all kinds of subjects, from civil unrest (" 'There are soldiers everywhere. Its' hard/ to tell which side they're on,' I said. 'They're against us./ Everyone's against us. Isn't that what you believe'A ") to altruism ("I said I didn't want any help from anyone, but, then,/ when no one offered to help, I was really hurt") and wildcats ("I loved his quick, agile movements, never doubting himself,/ as most of us do). A dark undercurrent runs beneath them all, and war and politics-which tend to confuse the poems' speakers-are frequent subjects. It's rare that a poet so far into his career-this is Tate's 15th collection-comes up with something new; quietly, Tate has found a fresh way of telling some of America's stories. (Apr.)

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