Where Thoughts Come From: New and Selected Poems

“Cutting edges / having always been an inspiration,” Steven Cramer writes in the very first poem (ironically titled “Coda”) in this, after eight books, his first collection of new and selected poems. I admire all of Cramer’s books and find throughout his work the striking surprises, the strangeness, and, yes, the cutting edges that I too crave in poetry. His poems continue to reveal his urgent sensitivity to the human condition and an uncanny emotional accessibility. They’re intelligent without being merely intellectual, and always thoughtfully gauged in form and structure beyond being merely “well-made.” Even his earliest poems had a rare freshness (in all senses of the word)—touching and comic, erotic and elegiac—sometimes all at once. I’m happy to see so many of Cramer’s early poems come so vividly alive again in this generous selection from each of his previous books. And the two rich sections of new poems are if anything even more deeply memorable. Here’s a book both new and old that demands and rewards our full attention and that genuinely earns our unqualified celebration.

—Lloyd Schwartz, author of Artur Schnabel and Joseph Szigeti Play Mozart at the Frick Collection (April 4, 1948) and other poems