Worshipful Company of Fletchers

..".Mr. Tate's gift is such that many of [his] poems move me at least to plain envy of what he can do."-- W.S. Merwin"[James Tate] never ceases to astonish, dismay, delight, confuse, tickle, and generally improve the quality of our lives."-- John Ashbery"Tate's poems are meditative, introverted, self-reliant, funny, alarming, strange, difficult, intelligent, and beautifully crafted. He is an impressive writer whose process of imaginative growth is through that deliberate extinction of personality which T.S. Eliot called for as the indispensable means of turning a man or woman of powerful personality into a writer of powerful poems."-- "New York Times Book Review""Tate is a pure and unique American poet....His new book is as fresh and moving as his appreciators have come to expect. "Worshipful Company of Fletchers" is one of the best examples of sharp-as-a-tack contemporary American languageliveliness you're likely to find on bookshelves these days, and it has the added advantage of not being soulless."-- "Los Angeles Times Book Review"