Earthling
Poems
7 November 2017
Description
Earthling confronts our deepest fears in clear and haunting language, from “a poet of extraordinary gifts” (American Academy of Arts and Letters).
“Earthling” is one of the oldest words in the English language, our original word for ploughman, a keeper of the earth. In poems simultaneously ordinary and otherworldly, James Longenbach traces the life of a modern-day earthling as he looks squarely at his little patch of earth and at the vast emptiness of interstellar space. Beginning with the death of the earthling’s mother and ending with a confrontation with his own mortality, the poems within Earthling resist complaint or agitation. In them, the real and the imagined, the material and the allegorical, intersect at shifting angles and provide fresh perspectives and lasting consolation.
Awards
Shortlisted — National Book Critics Circle Award, 2017
Also By: James Longenbach 
Seafarer: New Poems with Earthling and Forever
Hardback, 2024
The final collection of new poems from acclaimed poet James Longenbach, together with two previous volumes that confront mortality.
Forever: Poems
Paperback, 2023
In lucid, elegant poems, Forever contemplates love against the pressing question of mortality after a diagnosis of cancer
Forever: Poems
E Book, 2021
In lucid, elegant poems, Forever contemplates love against the pressing question of mortality after a diagnosis of cancer.
How Poems Get Made
Paperback, 2018
A comprehensive guide to writing or reading poetry, by “one of our most lucid and important critics” (American Academy of Arts and Letters).
How Poems Get Made
E Book, 2018
A comprehensive guide to writing or reading poetry, by “one of our most lucid and important critics” (American Academy of Arts and Letters).
