Disappearances

Vijay Seshadri is a writer of subtle, elastic and unblinking intelligence. His poems inhabit the crossroads of history and wilderness, the imaginative realm where fir and alder trees share a common life with reggae bands, refugees, office buildings and speeding traffic. Grave and witty, classical and contemporary, this volume is a compilation of two books, wild Kingdom (1996) and The Long Meadow (2004)-for which he was awarded the 2003 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.