<p>"When Lamantia's <em>Selected Poems</em> was first published in the mid sixties, it captured the revolutionary spirit of the times and went on to become an unlikely bestseller. Like free jazz, Lamantia's poetry shows that visionary art can serve as the expression of social upheaval and the desire for progressive change—for what is heard in such work is the <em>pure cry of the crisis</em>. Thus the reissue of this classic <em>Selected</em> at our latest moment of crisis could not be more timely. As is true of the greatest poetry, Lamantia's work has maintained its relevance across historical epochs, offering many pathways to the garden of Utopia."<strong>—Andrew Joron, author of <em>O0</em></strong></p><p>"These poems having been ignited prior to our personal contact, they empower devastating riddles, compound projections, exploded amphorae, never as stillborn imaginative particles, never self-imbibed by lingual stasis, but as astronomical trace units alive as living realm '. . . to go beyond its own existence.' They are magnetic flares, potent sigils, magically arising from untold crevasses."<strong>—Will Alexander, author of <em>Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane)</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Praise for Philip Lamantia:<br /></em></strong></p><p>“A voice that rises once in a hundred years.”—<b>André Breton, cofounder of Surrealism<br /></b></p> <p>“An American original, soothsayer even as Poe, genius in the language of Whitman, native companion and teacher to myself.”—<b>Allen Ginsberg, author of <i>Howl and Other Poems</i></b><br /></p><p>“You will probably be our greatest living poet since Whitman.”—<b>Henry Miller, author of <i>Tropic of Cancer</i></b><br /></p><p>“Philip Lamantia’s poems are about rapture as a condition. They are spiritual and erotic at the same time. Bright and dark, the enclosed polarities of devotion. St. Teresa and Rimbaud.”—<b>Tom Clark, author of <i>Truth Game</i></b><br /></p><p>“The blade-flash of Lamantia’s word lode strikes the owl stone, arcs to inspire. A quotidian American surrealism? Sudden array of Lemmy Cautions dashing through a hundred identical hotel doors. Visions for sure. Quick! Akhmatova in Lemuria!”—<b>Clark Coolidge, author <i>The Crystal Text</i></b><br /></p> <p>“A man in command of a wild imagination . . . with a particular place in the ranks of the most important moderns.”—<i><b>Library Journal</b></i></p>