Letters to a Stranger

The searing collection, a cult favorite for decades, by the late Thomas James I will last forever. I am not impatient- My skin will wait to greet its old complexions. I'll lie here till the world swims back again. -from "Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh" Thomas James's Letters to a Stranger -originally published in 1973, shortly before James's suicide-has become one of the underground classics of contemporary poetry. In this new edition, with an introduction by Lucie Brock-Broido and four of James's poems never before published in book form, this fraught and moving masterpiece is at last available. Letters to a Stranger is a new book in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series, edited by Mark Doty, dedicated to bringing essential books of contemporary American poetry back into print.