The four parts of this highly accomplished collection showcase the different facets and wide breadth of John Wood's poetic talent. Displayed here are his ability to sustain a sequence, his adeptness with lyricism and the short form, and his sensuous feeling for this life and the life of the past.

In regard to the latter, Wood begins the book with his poetic account of the amazing life and adventures of the vigorous American utopianist Wilhelm Johannes Hoade. Wood's account reads like a novel as he weaves a fictional narrative out of lyric poetry, a narrative that is finally convincing and true in spite of its obvious impossibility.

The second section, “Homage to Dafydd ap Gwilym,” is a free but artistically faithful translation after some of the medieval Welsh poet's major poems, arranged in a way to suggest in a natural/supernatural mode his remarkable character and biography. The third part is a group of finely tuned, mostly lyric poems dealing with family, friends, and intellectual concerns; the fourth is a group of contemporary and historical “revelations,” quite striking in scope and variety. All combine to form a dazzling whole.

John Wood is well known for his brilliant writing on the history of photography, but for many years he has also centered on his work as a poet, publishing in some of the very best magazines and gaining the deep admiration of many writers and poets. This book is testimony of his devotion to his craft – a fully realized, mature, and carefully constructed collection.

Selected Poems, 1968–1998, represents thirty years of John Wood's work, offering his readers a most comprehensive view of an unusual mind and spirit that is at once eloquent and humorous. In poems that range from narratives, lyrics, and elegies, to odes, satires, and even a mini-epic, his work whips language into intense emotion. Recalled memories tumble with sense and grace. The homely and the visionary intertwine as the often stark realities of human experience are infused with love and light. The prospering genius of these poems is that they seek not so much to redeem or reclaim what is lost, but to redirect perspectives with a generous sweep of possibilities. Wood's craft as a wordsmith gives us a voice that powerfully interprets what it means to be human and alive. John Wood holds professorships in both photographic history and English literature at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he is also director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. He is the author of three previous books of poetry and seven books of art and photographic criticism. His books have won the Iowa Poetry Prize twice, the American Library Association's Choice Outstanding Academic Books of 1992, and the New York Times Book Review Best Photo Books of 1995.