Wild Hours - by John Freeman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Moving between encounters in Lebanon, ancient woods across England and Europe, and the cities of his native California, Wild Hours asks what it means to live in a world where wildness endures--and where it can also become a source of lethal threat. A horse escaped onto a highway; an olive grove outside Beirut; a population that says no to war, to genocide. How does the wild within and among us connect us, and how do we grieve the costs of empire? Is it possible that what is wild--in the sense of being out of control, endlessly consuming--is something the natural world has always been able to recognize?

In poems that move in arresting ways, at once intimate and ritualistic, panoramic and miniature, political and personal, Wild Hours marks a new step forward for a poet whose work has never separated these elements.

Review Quotes

Praise for John Freeman

"Wind, Trees has Freeman's characteristic quietness: an understated, restrained quality which lends itself particularly well to post-pandemic writing. . . . Through exploration of form, repetition of ideas, and meandering of thought, the collection quietly stirs up issues of loss, friendship and partnership, and how to coexist in this dark yet brave new world."--Rain Taxi

"Urgent, descriptive, plainspoken, hard-edged--a glasswork of facts--the poetry of John Freeman seems to come from a place of intense inner weather."--Jesse Nathan, McSweeney's

"There is wistfulness in these poems, though they never become mired in shadows of what is lost or gone."--Booklist

"At the intersection of art and heart, this magnificent sheaf of voyages leads us through the difficult and picturesque atlas of a life... This is an enduring and rapturous account of a life's journey to plumb the depths of the known in order to reveal the hidden and unknown."---D.A. Powell

"In Freeman's hands the most minimal scenes, the smallest gestures, record our persistence and fragility. Disconsolate, loving, burdened by memory, undeceived but somehow still doggedly hopeful, these poems help us to see a world we're just beginning to map."---Mark Doty

About the Author

John Freeman is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including California Rewritten, Tales of Two Planets, and three previous collections published by Copper Canyon Press: Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Sun, and Alta, where he has hosted the California Book Club for the past six years. His writing has been translated into more than twenty languages. The former editor of Granta, he is currently an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf.