Jay Parini was born in Pittston, Pennsylvania in 1948. He is the author of six novels, including, The Last Station, and biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner. Parini was awarded the Chicago Tribune-Heartland Award for the best work of nonfiction in 2000, the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and the Hale Medal for Literature 2003. He teaches English at Middlebury College in Vermont.

The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems
by Jay Parini

Paperback, 130 pages

ISBN-13: 978-0807615461
$14.95 (Can $16.95)

Jay Parini is an acclaimed American poet. He is widely recognized for his ability to confront modern issues in a variety of forms, while adding a highly musical sense of phrasing and a relentless sense of humor. Parini, as seen in his previous works of poetry— Anthracite Country (1982), Town Life (1988), and House of Days (1998)—has created a remarkable voice of his own. The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems (George Braziller, April 2005) is a testament to Parini’s unique poetic style and constantly evolving vision.

A compilation of 59 new poems, most of which being published for the first time, and 43 poems from his previous collections; this new book demonstrates Parini’s wide range of poetic registers. The new poems open with a sequence responding to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The second sequence deals with personal themes, while the third continues Parini’s exploration of the relation between language and mind. The poems taken from his three previous works of poetry have been carefully chosen to represent Parini’s overall experience as an American poet from the beginning stages to the development of his latest sequence of 54 poems.