A delicious and extensive sampling spanning 44 years of poetry from the published collections and new work of Michael Blumenthal, of whom Howard Nemerov, former Poet Laureate, said, "I know of no younger poet with a greater gift, nor of anyone who has used it better." Seamus Heany, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature: "One of the natural poets of his generation." Previously endorsed by Maxim Kumin, W.D. Snodgrass and Howard Nemerov, among others. The book selects from nine published volumes, including Dusty Angel, which was published as a BOA Edition. The entire series of the book Laps, published as a slim volume in 1985, is presented in its entirely. Supporting comments are presented from Nemerov and Heany and also Anthony Hecht, Helen Vendler, W.D. Snodgrass, Jay Parini, Linda Gregerson, Phillip Lopate, Stepehn Dunn, Edward Hirsch and others.
Michael Blumenthal was previously Director of Creative Writing at Harvard and, more recently, Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Immigration Clinic at the West Virginia University College of Law. In addition to ten books of poetry, he has published ten other books that include novels, short stories, essays and translations. He spends his time between Washington, D.C. and in the small Hungarian village of Hegymagas near Lake Balaton.
"Michael Blumenthal is a much-decorated, award-winning poet/scholar,so it was with great anticipation that I agreed to review his latest book, Don't Die: Poems, 2013-2021… This new volume does not disappoint. Blumenthal may go on to write other books—he is only 72—but this book feels like a culmination of topic and sensibility … Overall, one can say of Don't Die as a whole that the poems feel comfortable in the richest sense. Not without pain or suffering, but having pushed through to fulfillment and a good dose of humor and self-realization … a satisfying place to arrive." - David Radavich
"Even beyond their poise and elegance, there's a wonderful affability to Michael Blumenthal's poems. All have such an inviting sense of welcome ,humor, romance, and intimacy that one may not immediately notice how elegiac, heartbreaking, and full of wisdom they are. This is the finest collection of poetry I've read in a very long time." - Ron Hanson
"Clarity, grace, a kind of insouciant irony combined with warmth of feeling, Michael Blumenthal's poetry is light in the best sense: it never sits heavy on the reader yet is substantial, civilized and capable of articulating the human condition, including its pains and losses, without melodrama, high sentence or self-pity. The sensibility is related to Richard Wilbur's in terms of poetic intelligence, but is entirely its own. No Hurry is a gorgeous book: the world of flesh, mind and heart spoken through air and silk." - George Szirtes
