Press Release January 27, 2014—For Immediate Release Contact: Stephanie Elliott (860) 685-7723 or
[email protected] Wesleyan University Press, 215 Long Lane, Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress Electronic Review Copies are now available for most titles. In Defense of Nothing Selected Poems, 1987–2011 by Peter Gizzi 240 pp. 6-1/8 x 8-1/4” $26.95 Hardcover, 978-0-8195-7430-5 $20.99 Ebook, 978-0-8195-7431-2 Publication Date: March 3, 2014 Wesleyan University Press is pleased to announce perceptibility to focused intensity at disorienting, the release of In Defense of Nothing, Selected Dickinsonian speed. His poetry is an example of Poems, 1987–2011. Peter Gizzi has been hailed as how a poet’s total, tonal attention can disclose one of the most significant and distinctive voices orders of sensation and meaning. His beautiful writing today. Gathered from over five collections, lines are full of deft archival allusion, and his and representing close to twenty-five years of influences range from Simonides to Schuyler, work, the poems in this generous selection strike a but those voices, those prosodies, aren’t ever dynamic balance of honesty, emotion, intellectual decorative; Gizzi is gathering from the air a live depth and otherworldly resonance—in Gizzi’s tradition.” work, poetry itself becomes a primary ground of human experience. Haunted, vibrant, and saturated Peter Gizzi has published five previous books of with luminous detail, Gizzi’s poetry enlists the poetry in addition to a number of limited-edition American vernacular in a magical and complex chapbooks, folios, and artist books.