The first broad retrospective of August Kleinzahler’s career, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City gathers poems from his major works along with a rich portion of new poems that visit different voice registers, experiment with form and length, and confirm Kleinzahler as among the most inventive and brilliant poets of our time. Travel—actual and imaginary—remains a passion and inspiration, and in these pages the poet also finds “This sanctified ground / Here, yes, here / The dead solid center of the universe / At the heart of the heart of America.”

Praise for The Strange Hours Travelers Keep:

 

"[Kleinzahler's] scope is large, his diction wildly exact, his line inventive, his means varied, and he never condescends." --Maureen N. McLane, The New York Times Book Review

 

"Erudite, restless, intellectually curious, alert to what goes on around him from the moment he opens his eyes in the morning, [Kleinzahler] brings to mind Frank O'Hara . . . Wonderful." --Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books

 

"Kleinzahler mixes the pungent and the delicate, the literary and the colloquial, to create a fine, technicolor-like excess." --John Palattella, The Los Angeles Times

August Kleinzahler was born in Jersey City in 1949. He is the author of ten books of poems and a memoir, Cutty, One Rock. His most recent book of poetry, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, was awarded the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize. He lives in San Francisco.

Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Distributor: MPS
Publication Date: 04-01-2008
Pages: 256
Measurements: 8.25in X 5.50in