Sensational Nightingales: The Poems of Walter Pavlich

Praised by Gary Snyder and Larry Levis, the award-winning poet Walter Pavlich was, from the mid-1980s through the late-1990s, a regular presence in literary magazines and at literary festivals throughout the US. Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1955, Pavlich's early work documented the hardscrabble lives of the urban and rural working class and celebrated the landscape of his beloved Pacific and Interior Northwest. As such, his work is a window to the end of an era in the American West. A student of the comedy of Laurel and Hardy, he also studied with Richard Hugo, whose own vision of the West and its marginalized lives drew Pavlich to Montana. By the end of his short life, Pavlich's poetry had evolved toward a deeply resonant lyrical tenderness and philosophical quietism. In an interview Pavlich said, "I've always tried to define--and celebrate--sort of hard things in life. To try to find beauty in them--or to be more patient and watch the beauty unfold." Sensational Nightingales brings back into print for the first time the entire body of this essential poet's work.