The David Shapiro New and Selected Poems is unbelievably good, though I fear that if I looked through some of the original books I would find poems missing. I'd love to have a Collected Poems too, but I think strategically this is a better moment for a Selected. David at 60 is still a child prodigy. When he grows up he'll be even better.

Even good university libraries might not have January or some of the early books, or even the mid-career books, and not everyone has access to a good university library anyway. This means that much of David's achievement has been virtually invisible for forty years. I think this Selected Poems will go along way to proving what some of us have already known, what Jim Jarmusch says on the blurb, "one of our greatest poets."

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Montejo's Partitura de la cigarra [title poem of the book] is also very good, if you like late modernist quiet mastery like I do.