The Other Poems - Paperback

by Paul Legault (Author)

There You Go

At long last, I'm going in
with everybody.

EVERYBODY: Everybody, shut up.
MONDAY: It's happening again.
MONEY: It's me, isn't it?
A SYSTEM: Can I just say:

Run free in the wheat, commandant--
like a plow with a human face or

like a face plowing down the American plain.

These are "talky sonnets" in the vein of John Berryman's and Ted Berrigan's, written on the poet's lunch hour in the spirit of Frank O'Hara. Winner of the Fence Modern Poets series.

Paul Legault's first book, The Madeline Poems, was published in 2010. Raised in Tennessee, Paul lives with his husband in Brooklyn, New York, where he works at the Academy of American Poets.

Author Biography

Paul Legault was born in Ontario and raised in Tennessee. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia and a B.F.A. in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Awl, Denver Quarterly, Maggy, SUPERMACHINE, Washington Square, and other journals. His first book of poetry The Madeleine Poems was published by Omnidawn in 2010. Currently, he is translating the complete works of Guillaume Apollinaire as well as Renée Gagnon's Steve McQueen (mon amoureux) from the French. He has also finished an English-to-English translation of the complete works of Emily Dickinson, part of which has been published as a chapbook, The Emily Dickinson Reader, vol. 1 (Try and Make, 2009). With Sharmila Cohen, he edits the translation press Telephone Books. Paul lives with his husband, Orion Jenkins, in Brooklyn, NY where he works at the Academy of American Poets.