by Merrill Gilfillan (Author)
Gilfillan is a storyteller whose appeal is more mystical than realistic.--ALA Booklist
Gilfillan's -observations, quotations, etymologies, and classical forms are constructed by equal parts scholar and aesthete. He is a master of Low Distance. Gilfillan watches and then watches again. His writing is workman-like in the sense of what words are like, and luminous in its experimental directions.
If John Clare had toured the United States with Oscar Wilde, their notebooks, twisted together in a tornado and edited by Audubon and Escoffier, might have read like these poems: evocative, sophisticated, and as ever-in-the-present as memory must always be.--Tom Raworth
Merrill Gilfillan is the author of five books of poems and several books of prose essays.
Front Jacket
Gilfillan's hybrids--swatches of observations, quotations, etymologies, classical forms--are constructed by equal parts naturalist, aesthete, and scholar. His poetry is sometimes associated with New York-based writers who are now in their late 50s early 60s--associated in the sense of an encyclopedic knowledge of literary styles, the visual arts, philosophical treatises, musical forms, and numerous languages--but Gilfillan's landscapes and inspirations are taken from the Western United States--the Great Plains and mountains, which is part of what makes him so unique and refreshing.
Back Jacket
Merrill Gilfillan is the author of five books of poems, Skyliner (Blue Wind), To Creature (Blue Wind, 1975), Light Years: Selected Early Work (1977, Blue Wind), River Through Rivertown (1982, The Figures), and Satin Street (1997, Moyer Bell). He is perhaps most well known for his books of prose essays that include Chokecherry Places: Essays from the High Plains (1998, Johnson Books), which won the Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, Grasshopper Falls (2000, Hanging Loose Press), and Magpie Rising (2000, Hard Press), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. Gilfillan lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Author Biography
Gilfillan is the author of ten books of poetry, and several books of nonfiction essays on the Western United States.