Call it Thought: Selected Poems

Call It Thought spans more than thirty years of writing by an American poet whose career has encompassed a large portion of modern literary culture. As a student, Stephen Rodefer conversed with Robert Frost; he studied with Olson, Creeley, Ed Dorn and Basil Bunting before moving in the 1970s to Los Angeles, where he was an original member of the Poets’ Theater. Grounded in the modernism of Stein, Pound and Williams, Rodefer is the heir also to Frank O'Hara’s playful virtuosity and associated with the experimentalism of Language poetry. Touching all these, his work is a series of fruitful re-inventions, exhilarating, innovative and independent of any orthodoxy. This volume brings together his work for the first time. It includes selections from his acclaimed translations of Villon and the award-winning Four Lectures .