Selected Poems
In Five Sets
Laura Riding

Selection and preface by Laura (Riding) Jackson

Laura (Riding) Jackson is recognized as one of America’s great modernist poets although she renounced the writing of poetry in 1941, viewing poetry as “blocking truth’s ultimate verbal harmonies.”
Selected Poems: In Five Sets includes sixty-one poems personally selected and arranged by the author in 1970. Drawn from her Collected Poems of 1938, this is a remarkable distillation of Laura Riding’s poetic achievement.
The extraordinary preface is perhaps Laura (Riding) Jackson’s most succinct explanation of her renunciation of the writing of poetry, and is a provocative commentary on the contemporary poetry scene.

“Laura Riding is the greatest lost poet in American literature.”
—Kenneth Rexroth

Laura (Riding) Jackson (1901-1991) is the author of more than forty books of poetry, criticism, and story. In 1991, just months prior to her death, she was awarded the Bollingen Prize for lifelong service to poetry.

Paperback / $9.95 (Can $12.95) / ISBN 978-0-89255-189-7 / 94 pages / Poetry