Great Wave

In his acclaimed debut collection "The Incentive of the""Maggot, " Ron Slate delivered an ingenious and enigmatic account of the intersections of global, family and personal histories. Now, in "The Great Wave, " a more personal tone asserts itself as Slate fashions poignant and haunting poems that shock us with a recognition of our perilous times. These are poems of strange and sometimes caustic assessment, reflecting on family, the work life, catastrophe, creativity, solitude, and desire--tracking the transit between reality and the imagination, and creating the sound of its discoveries. Seductive, demanding, witty, and embittered, Slate's voice comes from a secret, intimate space abutting a large, incongruous world.
The poems in "The Great Wave, " so taken with the collisions between history and contemporary life, remind us that the role of poetry is to confirm our existence by giving shape to the inner world.