Contradictions: Poems - Hardcover

Contradictions calls into question perspective, beginning with the very words we use to communicate. A master of poetic form, Alfred Corn draws on (and improvises against) metrical traditions to verbally re-enact visual art and jazz; to see the world from multiple (and sometimes opposing) viewpoints; and to illuminate cultural nuances from religious history to present-day Chelsea in New York City.

Corn, a highly respected art critic, allows visual arts to play a pivotal role in this collection. In his long poem "Seeing All the Vermeers" he vows: "No matter how many years or flights / it took, I’d see all of Vermeer. . . ." Through wars and relationships, self-discovery and several decades, he pursues them all—to see each canvas, to understand the paintings, and to stand with his fellow travelers:

wearing Nikes, Levis, parkas; students, grizzled veterans,
young mothers, teachers, painters—awestruck, whispering
Heavens! Just look at that! . . .

"Transience and loss are the reigning themes of our day," says Corn, "but I want to move beyond loss and discover what can be found on the other side of it." Like other progressive poets, Corn sees personal experience, poetry, and political action as a continuum, and he regards artistic freedom as incomplete until all citizens are fully enfranchised.

"Corn attains a calm in which our attention is drawn not to the individual note of brilliance but to the grace of the whole."—The Village Voice

Alfred Corn is the author of eight books of poetry, a novel, a study of prosody, and a collection of essays. As an art critic, he writes for Art in America and ARTNews; his poems appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Nation, and The New Republic. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA and has taught at Yale, UCLA, and Columbia University.