MURPHY, N.C. -
Feb. 9, 2014 -
PRLog -- FutureCycle Press (www.futurecycle.org)
is pleased to announce the publication of
William Greenway: Selected Poems. This 130-page collection spans seven volumes and more than twenty-five years of writing. For those not yet familiar with William Greenway, author Lynne Powell describes this volume as “the perfect introduction to his lively, irresistible work.”
In these pages, readers are given a good taste of
Everywhere at Once (2008), which won the Ohioana Poetry Book of the Year Award—as did
Ascending Order (2003). Other samplings are taken from
Pressure Under Grace and
Where We’ve Been (Breitenbush Books, 1982, 1987),
How the Dead Bury the Dead and
Simmer Dim (University of Akron Press, 1994, 1999), and
Fishing At the End of the World (Word Press, 2005).
The selections in this book travel between muggy recollections of a Southern Baptist childhood, meditations on the otherworldly beauty of Wales, and commentary on life, death, and the revelry in between. For every witty turn of phrase, a punch beyond the punch line stuns us with wisdom and transcendence. A poem like “Ophelia Writes Home,” a witty revisionist account that shifts the slaughter of that famous tragedy to domestic bliss, exemplifies Greenway’s genius for reconciliation, for the grace of happiness no matter what happens. We smile, we grieve, and we keep reading these surehanded and goodhearted poems.
William Greenway's work has been published in
Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and
Prairie Schooner. He has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors’ Prize from
Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from
The Writer’s Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and was 1994 Georgia Author of the Year. Greenway is Professor of English at Youngstown State University.
William Greenway: Selected Poems is now available on the Catalog tab of the FutureCycle Press website (www.futurecycle.org)
and from Amazon in paperback. The Kindle edition will be released later this week.