George Washington

Reviews / Votes

"Brilliant and necessary. . . . George Washington, [Fitzgerald's] second book, barrels forward with a confidence that marks him as a young poet-he is 32-to be reckoned with." -- Jeff Gordinier - New York Times "[Fitzgerald is] already an eminent figure in twenty-first century poetry. . . . A mature, resonant, triumphant collection of wistful elegies and whimsical love poems, George Washington proves that Fitzgerald is one of the most brilliantly multifaceted poets writing today." -- Zachary Pace - Bookforum "George Washington, Adam Fitzgerald's anticipated new collection, journeys with confident speed past the moment of inception for any given poem. Whoever-father or lover-died happened outside the frame of these virtuosic poems. A fury of lists, names, places, from literary figures to TV stations, replaces biography and becomes experience. The graveyard is now the Courtyard Marriot. Elegy is buried inside the days and despite all that reappears, 'You don't come back. . . . We welcome them without you.' These exponentially expansive poems formally hold their grief at a distance between Mary Mother of God and The Empire Strikes Back. Fitzgerald's 'sedentary grammars' and 'interior graphics' live exquisitely underground. This is stunning poetry." -- Claudia Rankine "This book is a major crossing, the poet steps lightly on loads of tingly crap like the apocalyptically organized photos of Andreas Gursky or Hart Crane's intentionality in a whole new place. No one understands postmodernity better than Jersey boy prelate Adam Fitzgerald who stands tall and grounded as a poet of heart, and excess: cries visionary Madonna tears without irony because the monuments on his riverbanks though toxic and hallucinatory now weep fortitude; even prayer." -- Eileen Myles "The cadences in George Washington are meticulously, rigorously controlled. The energy comes from the conflict between the shining wit, the wry observation, the gorgeous phrasing and the need to remain rooted, true, tactful and in the American grain. On display we find a most interesting sensibility-troubled, amused, laconic, playful-plus a poet in possession of a very serious gift." -- Colm Toibin "If there are no ideas but in things, Fitzgerald's 'things' have gotten out of hand: trademarked, shrink-wrapped, mass-produced, including memory itself, which has become a market-engineered, instantly retrievable 'thing' called nostalgia. Fitzgerald voraciously returns to the 90s, when there was just enough technology and everyone hung out at the mall and America had a budget surplus before its precipitous decline. George Washington is as lurid as a neon Trapper Keeper, relentless and completely frightening; an astonishing read." -- Cathy Park Hong