Daffodil - by Vincent Katz (Hardcover)

About the Book

"With his painterly eye for the precise detail and his disarming concision on the page, Katz opens this book with a powerful image of "all time sequestered in the fold of a daffodil," setting the stage for an encounter with the immediacy we must embrace to see the world around us with clarity, even as we penetrate to the core, to the deep center of our experience of the self and of all living species. At the center of this collection are his captivating poems about animals-"The hope in fear / Also thrill to run" of the rabbit, the snapping turtle "nestled / Next to a brother rock," and the muddled human attempt to save a creature separated from its mother in "The Fawn"-as the poems continually engage with the troubling and heady passage of days and years, and a promise to honor a life in the here and now, to walk the street with the sense that, "It's not about buying / But rather about feeling the air." Whether we're tumbling with Katz in a field of yellow flowers with a group of long-haired young people what seems only a moment (but is really four decades) ago or doing yoga right now, looking out a sliver of window at moving clouds, this collection evokes the exact scenes and buzz of perception that command our daily thoughts, that usher in grace and beauty, with their quietly urgent moral qualities, which, Katz suggests, can shape our days if we allow them to"--

Book Synopsis

Stopping time on the page to discover the poetic moment where past and present are one, Vincent Katz (called a poet of "vibrant cinematic hunger" by Eileen Myles) opens himself to the fleeting beauty of both culture and nature in this stunning gathering of new work.

With his painterly eye and disarming concision on the page, Katz opens this book with a powerful image of "all time sequestered in the fold of a daffodil," setting the stage for an encounter with the immediacy we must embrace to see the world around us with clarity. At the center of this collection are his captivating poems about animals--"The hope in fear / In thrill to run" of the rabbit, the snapping turtle "nestled // Next to brother rock"--as the poems continually engage with the heady passage of days and years, and the promise to honor a life in the here and now, to walk the street with the sense that, "It's not about buying / But rather about feeling the air."

"Whether in nature, or on a crowded or empty city street, was all a dream?" Katz writes, considering Daffodil. "Surely, there was and is still someone close, and that continues, as animals, despite war, despite incursions, continue. New York is a place of return, where we're aware of faces and other things; there, or in a field of flowers, in places in the distant past and present, love has some inexorable way of continuing."

These poems evoke the exact scenes that command our daily thoughts, that usher in grace and beauty, with their quietly urgent moral qualities, which, Katz suggests, can shape our days if we allow them to.

Review Quotes

Praise for Daffodil
"Katz revels in the quotidian. . . . I could quote from [his] new book ad infinitum for the sheer pleasure of hearing the hard-won simplicity of the verses. . . . The declarative nature of these lyrical verses. . . provokes an often-arresting complex of thoughts. . . . The logic or impetus of the poem becomes inseparable from the cityscape and, in turn, with the lives of those who inhabit the place and poem. . . . Most telling for me is the conviction of the poet's vision, a mature insistence on his subject enabling the poet to risk it all with the brevity of his compositions." --Paul Vangelisti, The Brooklyn Rail

Praise for Vincent Katz:
"In the curious timelessness of time, this writing makes a golden space of thought and echo." -- Robert Creeley

"His vision is generous and panoramic . . . his style a combination of classical elegance and casual grace." --Elaine Equi

"A tremendous amount of energy is required to embrace New York as ardently as these poems do." -- Susan Timmons, Poetry Project Newsletter

"Vincent Katz is a rare kind of contemporary poet in being an expert guide to pleasure."
--Kenneth Koch

"A voice in the grand tradition of New York poetry, from Walt Whitman to Frank O'Hara." --Paul Vangelisti, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Katz balances narration and intuition, and juxtaposes the outspoken with the lyrical to usher the reader into the speaker's journey." -- Elizabeth Forsythe, Columbia Poetry Review

"Stripped of rococo embellishment or flowery pretense, [Katz's poems] stand as testimony to keen observance and thoughtful assessment." --Greg Masters, Sensitive Skin

"Remarkable. . . . Lucid, succinct, and fluent." --Rochak Agarwal, Pegasus Literary

About the Author

VINCENT KATZ is the author of the poetry collections Broadway for Paul (2020), Southness (2016), and Swimming Home (2015) and of the book of translations The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (2004), which won a National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association. He is the editor of Black Mountain College Experiment in Art (2002), and his writing on contemporary art and poetry has appeared in publications such as Apollo, Art in America, ARTnews, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. As curator of the "Readings in Contemporary Poetry" series at Dia Chelsea, Katz also edited the anthology Readings in Contemporary Poetry for the Dia Art Foundation (2017). He lives in New York City.