Collected Poems

At last, the stunning lifework of this beloved, prize-winning poet gathered in one volume, covering sixty years of poetry, from 1956 to 2016.

Born in 1921, Marie Ponsot began her career in 1956 with True Minds, one of the famous Pocket Poets pamphlets published by City Lights. After this auspicious beginning, Ponsot went on to an unconventional career and would not publish again until 1981, when Admit Impediment was published by Knopf. Her reemergence--after raising seven children and always writing, if not actively publishing--brought us a writer of mature wit, unusual rhythms and a poetry of sparkling surface, though her ear is tuned always to the deeper music of human feeling. Ponsot values the local and personal as a proving ground for the grand mysteries, and in examining the powerful underground life of women, her poetry is as practical as it is profound.

MARIE PONSOT's books include The Bird Catcher, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry in 1998, and, most recently,Easy. Professor emerita of English at Queens College, CUNY, she has also taught at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y and the New School. Her awards include the Phi Beta Kappa Medal, the Shaughnessy Prize of the Modern Language Association, and the Poetry Society of America's Frost Medal for lifetime achievement. She lives in New York City.