The Welcome

Author: David Joel Friedman
Fables for the modern age
Paper – $15.95
978-0-252-07292-5
eBook – $14.95
978-0-252-09130-8
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/01/2006
Cloth: 03/06/2006
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About the Author

David Joel Friedman is the author of Soldier Quick with Rain.

Reviews


Blurbs

"The fact is that The Welcome is full of pleasures, both linguistic and ideational. There's a philosophical intelligence behind it, one that will rarely allow itself the sobrieties of the philosophical. . . . David Friedman blends surreal hijinks with gestures toward the serious, At their best, an original voice guides a distinctive sensibility in these poems. They'll give you, if you let them, one of literature's underrated virtues: a good time."--Stephen Dunn, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

"Whirlwinds, giant crickets, shadowy goons, sartorial mishaps, miraculous transfigurations--these are just a few of the forces encountered by the existentially harried characters in The Welcome. Like the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Friedman's poems are shot through with delight and drea, with a childlike innocence that nonetheless intuits the magnitude and depth of the world's darkness. This is a beautiful book from a truly original and inventive poet whose love for language manifests itself with stunning results."--Geoffrey Nutter, author of Water's Leaves & Other Poems

"Here is a book of prose poems so democratic and engaging in nature that it offers a friendly welcome to anybody fortunate enough to possess a copy. The characters inhabiting its pages--whether green bears, choirmasters, little pastors, or objects capable of talk--are doppelgangers not only of the author's inner self, but that of the rest of us as well. Friedman is a risk-taking acrobat of language, the three rings of his circus the past, present, and future that inform every moment of our lives. His is a serious book written as if it's not--and that's part of its charm."--James McConkey, author of Court of Memory