Everything and Other Poems

Poetry. Charles North is the quintessential poet’s poet. James Schuyler confidently named him the most stimulating poet of his generation, while Harry Mathews possibly took it one step further to claim that Charles belongs on the summit of our American Parnassus. To claim that Charles North is a cornerstone in the home of contemporary American poetry would not be an exaggeration. In EVERYTHING AND OTHER POEMS, his twelfth collection, the trademarks of Charles’ poetry shine with an earnestness, ambition, intellect, and his modest sense of humor, capturing the many-faceted lives we lead. For example, in the 26-page-long title poem Everything, we watch as the poet’s mind, like a river, flows past, around, and lifts up the detritus of his imagination: books, movies, paintings, cartoons, animals, the silent letter e, death, the moon, the weather, the rhythms, sounds, questions and textures of life itself. Prose poems, long-form poems, studies for poems, lists, plus a game of cat and mouse with some French Symbolists, North is at the top of his game in this collection. If anything, with a career spanning over 40 years, this book proves North to be the poet of, well, everything.