david yezzi

Praise for Azores (2008)

“Yezzi finds a way to write about relationships not found much in poetry, the iffy connections with acquaintances, couples, and places, cemented with convenience and jealousy as well as fondness. Romance will always have the limelight, but I think Yezzi’s tacit statement is correct, that these shallower relationships, failing in droves, contribute the bulk of the sadness to life.”

Poetry

“Azores is not merely an impressive collection, although it is that. It also serves as a pleasing reminder that there are poets still writing for whom the responsibility of expression outweighs the desire to be regarded as shamanic.... [I]t is pleasing and useful to have a poet writing with controlled rigor about important themes.”

Contemporary Poetry Review

“It is this breeching, this inability to exist in one mode that makes Azores such a valuable collection of work. Not content to merely model our divided humanity, the structure of Yezzi’s poems is amphibious – this is a formal collection that doesn’t read formally.... Buy this book, read these poems, and let them ask you where change lives. Wrestle with their words for the answer.”

Strong Verse

“Intelligent and moving, David Yezzi‘s Azores relies on understatement, humor, and masterful control of tone. Proficient and inventive in traditional forms, this poet speaks in an ironic, compassionate voice, his dark vision reminiscent of Frost at his most tender.”

The Antioch Review

“The new book of poetry that gave me the most pleasure this year is Azores, by David Yezzi. Yezzi writes with insight and elegance about the lives we actually lead—about the ironic balance between violent feeling and regulated behavior that defines adulthood.”

Adam Kirsch, Slate

“What a beautiful book...redolent of Larkin, of Thom Gunn. That fierce eye, fierce and formal control.”

No Tell poetry blog

“The sophistication of Mr. Yezzi’s language perfectly suits the sophistication of his understanding, and some of the poems in Azores—“Very Like a Whale,” “Dog’s Life,” the brilliant and unexpected dramatic monologue “The Ghost-Seer”—display a mastery reminiscent of Philip Larkin and Donald Justice, which no poet of Mr. Yezzi’s generation can match.”

The New York Sun

“Yezzi’s vocabulary and diction are entirely contemporary; his meters and forms are traditional.... Altogether, for versatility and craft, he’s a new, necessarily less jingly Longfellow.”

Booklist

Praise for The Hidden Model (2003)

“Yezzi brings together beauty and skepticism, eloquence and doubt, the visual and the verbal. Reading him reminds us that poetry is capable of the most subtle perception and the most civilized thought.”

Adam Kirsch, Contemporary Poetry Review

“[Yezzi’s] elements are water and earth—locality, gravity and mortality—and with them he has made some durable poems.”

Stephen Burt, The New York Times Book Review

“A first collection of unusual poise, The Hidden Mode is rich in rewards. The poet’s emotional and visual acuity is striking.”

Jane Satterfield, The Antioch Review

“[A] polished, intellectually intriguing, and emotionally precise collection, whose forms and themes are complex, subtle collaborators.”

Adam L. Dressler, Parnassus: Poetry in Review