Surfings: Selected Poems of Will Inman

by David Ray (Editor), Michael Rattee (Editor)

The first major & definitive collection of poems by the legendary Will Inman, featuring stunning selections from over forty years of his experiences and meditations ranging from the wildernesses of Arizona to his early days as a poet and activist in the tough Lower East Side of Manhattan, to his artistic and cultural roots in North Carolina. Nearly all these poems in this collection were published throughout several decades either in broadsides, or in Inman chapbooks. The book's cover features "Anticipation" by award-winning poet/artist David Chorlton. Will Inman's "Surfings" has been awarded the distinction of the year's "Best Selected Poems" by the Latitudes Foundation. Whether writing about the streets of Brooklyn or the deserts of Arizona, about human triumph or human suffering, Will Inman's reputation among other writers and critics--nationally and internationally--is formidable and historic.

136 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2005

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this collection at my local used bookstore and took a gamble that I'd like it.

I did like some of the poems in this volume, understood the ones I liked, understood a few others, didn't like some I understood, and kinda got lost with a few. That's the hazard of poetry.

Inman's style is modern freestyle, though sometimes he did internal rhyming or stanzas or line end rhyming. This collection contained a lot of poems with "smooshed words" - like we smoosh together "can" and "not" into "cannot", he smooshed together words to describe something different than average English but still followable by the reader. Sometimes followable, depending on context of the poem.

Debating keeping it. Not sure if it's worth keeping if I only liked a handful, and out of that handful really resonated with three.

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