A commonplace book of pentastichs
By: James Laughlin ; edited with an introduction by Hayden Carruth.
Contributors: Carruth, Hayden, 1921-
Publisher: New Directions Book
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 94
Description: James Laughlin (1914-97) was a poet of distinction as well as the founding publisher of New Directions. A Commonplace Book of Pentastichs, the last book of his own that he helped to prepare, is a compilation of 249 poems composed in a five-line stanza form first introduced in The Secret Room (1997). A note to "Thirty-nine Pentastichs" in that earlier volume explains: "A 'pentastich' refers simply to a poem of five lines, without regard to metrics.

The present selection is of recent short-line compositions in natural voice cadence, many of them marginal jottings and paraphrases of commonplace book notations." Here, then, are armchair marginalia and apercus to be savored at random.
Notes: Includes index.