The Ruined Millionaire by Ben Mazer

The Ruined Millionaire New Selected Poems 2002–2022 "Mazer, along with his northeastern companions Nikolayev and Kapovich—of the further norths and further easts—make jubilant singing verse as they step through the western wreckage. This must be remembered, say the only poets who’ll matter, so I must write in the ways of memory." —Glyn Maxwell, from the Preface "These poems are like trees that contain and protect and conceal themselves from themselves. Each wears a rough coat over the sap, the heart, the rainwater and scars. In so many ways the bark of a tree is a scroll with its messages written out of and into its experience. Mazer’s poems know they are beautiful the way the wooden rills on a tree are elegant, made of history, of romance and pride." —Fanny Howe"Ben Mazer is a true inheritor of John Ashbery’s legacy, specifically the Ashbery of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Like that classic of American poetry, The Ruined Millionaire ironically also suits the contemporary Europea