Shroud of the Gnome

Speakers in James Tate''s poems are and are not like those we know: a man''s meditation on gardening renders him witless; another man traps theories and then lets them loose in a city park; a nun confides that it was her / cowboy pride that got her through; a gnome''s friend inhabits a world where a great eschatological ferment is at work. Shroud of the Gnome is a bravura performance in Tate''s signature style: playful wicked deliriously sober charming and dazzling. Here once again one of America''s most masterful poets celebrates the inexplicable in his own strange tongue.