University of Florida Homepage

Poems

PoemsJohn Poch (MFA, 1997)

Orchises Press, 2004
ISBN: 1932535004

Orchises Press is pleased to announce the first book by a much watched young writer, John Poch. The extraordinary mastery of form, the certain ear, and the freshness of a new voice mark this exciting debut. Entitled simply Poems, this is a stunning collection by one of the coolest, most technically adroit poets to appear in a decade.

Praise for John Poch:

from Peter Balakian: “John Poch’s poems are elegant and resonant and they possess an intellectual depth that never sacrifices emotional honesty. Poems is full of startling surprises and discovery. Poch’s imagination is at once philosophical and sensually immediate. This is an impressive debut.”

from B. H. Fairchild: “With the kind of appetite for language that Glenn Gould had for the sculptured lines of Bach and Schoenberg, John Poch with this book announces his presence among a group of younger poets who, contrary to current literary fashion, are rediscovering the interior life of poetic language and the powers of what Eliot called the auditory imagination. Stunningly articulate, Poch ranges within a wide repertoire of forms and meters – orthodox and experimental – and like Gould, he has the head and hands for it. Read, listen, enjoy.”