Amazon.com description: Product Description: Poems deal with history, art, the relationship between men and women, nature, death, and marriage from American poet James Tate who was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1943. He is the author of fifteen books of poetry, including "Shroud of the Gnome"; "Worshipful Company of Fletchers", which won the National Book Award in 1994; "Selected Poems", which won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award in 1991; "Distance from Loved Ones"; "Reckoner"; "Constant Defender"; "Riven Doggeries"; "Viper Jazz"; "Absences"; "Hints to Pilgrims"; "The Oblivion Ha-Ha"; and "The Lost Pilot", which was selected by Dudley Fitts for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. In addition to his poetry, Tate has also published two books of prose, "Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee" and "The Route as Briefed", and edited "The Best American Poetry 1997". His honors include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Poetry, the Tanning Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.