Umbra: Poems 1976 -1977 - Paperback

by Eric Basso (Author)

After completing his first collection of poems, Accidental Monsters, in six months, Eric Basso immediately began Umbra, which he finished on the eve of his thirtieth birthday. It is a poet's giant notebook, a laboratory for almost daily experiment with form and image. Many of the poems here read as extended haiku, others record fleeting visions, fluctuating states of mind, dwarfed mysteries of intrigue and sudden loss, brief comedies, or simply moments of heightened perception, all fixed like flies in amber. In this early collection, Basso unabashedly offers the reader poems written without a net. For anyone who wishes to look behind the curtain, Umbra is an indispensable document.

Author Biography

Eric Basso was born in Baltimore in 1947. His work has appeared in Asylum Annual, Bakunin, Central Park, Chicago Review, Collages & Bricolages, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, and many other publications. His novel, Bartholomew Fair, is available from Asylum Arts. He is the author of twenty-one plays. His critically acclaimed drama trilogy, The Golem Triptych; the complete short plays, Enigmas; his play The Sabbatier Effect; a book of short fiction, The Beak Doctor; and five collections of poetry, Accidental Monsters, The Catwalk Watch, The Smoking Mirror, Catafalques, and Ghost Light, are available from Asylum Arts, along with Decompositions: Essays on Art & Literature 1973-1989 and Revagations: 1966-1974, the first volume of a book of dreams. Basso's most recent previous collection of poems, Earthworks, was published by Six Gallery Press in 2008.