Art of the Sonnet

Reissue of Art of the Sonnet, Gil Orlovitz's remarkable and volatile 1961 collection-now presented with a new, revelatory introduction that situates him within (and just outside) the major currents of mid-century American poetry. These poems, written during the same years that Lowell, Berryman, Plath, Ginsberg, O'Hara, and Ashbery were reshaping the field, trace the turbulent inner landscape of a writer whose imagination burned fiercely yet remained largely unseen. Art of the Sonnet gathers 157 of the 334 known sonnets Orlovitz wrote during a turbulent career in which he also produced hundreds of other poems, several short stories, and three novels (one never published and tragically lost). What emerges is a portrait of a mind at once brilliant, erratic, and intoxicatingly alive on the page.