Fatal pleasure

by Sam Hamill

Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

Poet, editor, translator, and essayist, Sam Hamill is author of more than thirty books including two from BOA Editions, Gratitude (1998), and Dumb Luck(2002). He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including ones from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, two Washington Governor’s Arts Awards, the Stanley Lindberg Lifetime Achievement Award for Editing, and the Washington Poets Association Lifetime Achievement Award for poetry. He co-founded Copper Canyon Press, and has worked extensively in prisons and with battered women and children.

Reviews

[S Cearley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent work. The book is dominated by "Requiem," for Kenneth Rexroth. A couple of the poems are a little too leeringly obvious (e.g. "Body of Summer"). But in all places these keep a lyric, an emotional quality to the front balanced by an almost architectural structure, foundations and girders hidden by the glorious coverings of what is meant, but if you know where to look, you can appreciate the stark, strong, well-formed girders underneath, and feel their own beauty as well.