Hayden Carruth

It is impossible to imagine what American poetry in the twentieth century might look like without the magnanimity of the late James Laughlin, poet and publisher of New Directions. Among Laughlin's closest friends was poet Hayden Carruth, who served as author, editor, clerk, and typist for New Directions and, at a more personal level, "poetry doctor" for Laughlin himself. Beside the Shadblow Tree is the meditation of one great old poet upon the death of another, upon two lives intertwined in various ways for half a century. And because this book is utterly candid - spontaneous and true to what Carruth calls "the actual mental flow" - it moves us in ways conventional memoirs rarely do.

A collection of essays by poet Hayden Carruth that help chronicle his life and discuss his depression, his love of music, his attempted suicide, and other related topics.

Essays written over the course of nearly fifty years by one of the most independent and insightful reviewers of American poetry. The author insists that poetry must be textured into daily life for the sake of both. "The essays celebrate craft, ardor, and that resilient material, the word", says Adrienne Rich, herself a poet.

In The Last Poem in the World, he writes: "Would I write it if I could? / Bet your glitzy ass I would." By the author of Selected Essays & Reviews.

Hayden Carruth's From Snow and Rock, from Chaos - his first book since For You (1970) - contains a selection of his best short poems written between 1965 and 1972.