Letter to Poetry

In LETTER TO POETRY, Tom Mandel finds both Rhyme and Reason under the hood of his Coupe de Ville. Rhyme is sometimes played for winks and Reason cloaked in gentle humor ('Maybe more hot air would make it / safe to cross the brink of this thin ice?'), but the undertones are stoic, Talmudic, and wise. Poetry offers Mandel a vast formal, historical, and even autobiographical toolkit. When he writes that a metaphor is 'like a noun no longer / used on that occasion, ' his words are both wistful and transporting. Poetry was built to perform this task.-- Jean Day

It seems entirely right that Tom Mandel's LETTER TO POETRY should have been occasioned, in part, by his purposive misremembering of a remark made by Harry Mathews. A dark European stripe runs through the work of both writers, and perhaps only they would contrive to chance upon a ripe clinamen in the Florida Keys. But was the letter answered, the reader inquires? Hell--was it ever! The beguilingly odd works visited upon our correspondent evince a rich, comedic music shot through with moments of stark poignance and reflective beauty. Tom Mandel is here to fold you into a rhyme; the note on his door reads, ìIíll be back in no time.
-- Miles Champion

Tom Mandel was born and grew up in Chicago. He was educated in the city's jazz and blues clubs and at the University of Chicago. He has lived in New York, Paris, San Francisco and Washington DC. He lives in Lewes, Delaware. He is the author of REALISM (Burning Deck, 1991), Letters of the Law (Sun & Moon Press, 2000), TO THE COGNOSCENTI (Atelos, 2006), Erat (Burning Deck Press, 1981), Some Appearances (1987), Central Europe (Coincidence Press, 1985), Ready to Go (Ithaca House, 1981), and other books of poetry, as well as co-author of The Grand Piano. His work has been anthologized in Post-Modern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, In the American Tree, 49+1: Poètes Americain. as well as multiple volumes of Best American Poetry.