I came across the poet at a retreat center in '76. He had been there not long before I had (either as a lecturer or an experiencer I never found out which) and his work was still floating around in xerox copies like so many reminders of his presence. And his poems do have presence. They take you on a journey to the roots of consciousness. Very worth while.

In a time of divisiveness, John Tagliabue shows how to be inclusive. In a time of partisanship, Tagliabue embraces opposites. In a time of suspicion, Tagliabue accepts the other without making them over. New and Selected Poems includes more than half a century of poems, but I find the book speaks to our historical moment. For those who enjoy plenitude, I can recommend no more heartening way to move into the new year than to read--even read aloud--from this big book. It will make you want to reach out, to combat bitterness with wit, to love difference, to imagine, to fully live.

Despite his ethics of inclusion, there is no homogenization of the reader; nor does Tagliabue make an issue of cross-cultural engagement. Rather, his poetics demonstrates how to move in a direction neither of global uniformity nor of radical fragmentation in a globalized democracy. As such this most prolific of American poets mirrors "the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present" and confirms Shelley's belief that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World."

The verbal syncretism, oceanic rhythm that counters chronometric progression, freely flowing analogies, unpredictable prosodic doublings and embeddings serve to subvert the reader's expectation of univocal form, yet unravel a mutuality with all things, including the chaos needed in oneself to trigger recognitions, transformations, exchanges. The dialogical openness of Tagliabue's poems, old and new--and for longtime readers a special pleasure is to follow the changes through the decades--will make you hope for our escape from power, as Tagliabue's poems call for the reader to renounce monological boundaries for the lyric as genre.

What a gift of hope on this New Year's Eve! Thank you, John Tagliabue, for showing us the way.