Both intensely personal and deeply rooted in recognizable events of personal, familial, or national significance, "The Afterlife of Objects" is a kind of dreamed autobiography. With poise and skill, Dan Chiasson divulges the enigmas of the mind of not just one individual but of an entire social world through a beautifully constructed poetic voice that issues from a kind of mythic childhood of our collective, tortured humanity. This sophisticated debut collection offers deceptively simple poems that evoke highly complex states of mind with a voice that has long been listening to the discordant...

Dan Chiasson, hailed as -one of the most gifted poets of his generation- upon the appearance of his first book, takes inspiration for his stunning new collection from the Historia Naturalis of Pliny the Elder.
-What happens next, you won't believe, - Chiasson writes in -From the Life of Gorky, - and it is fair warning. This collection suggests that a person is like a world, full of mysteries and wonders-and equally in need of an encyclopedia, a compendium of everything known. The long title sequence offers entries such as -The Sun- (-There is one mind in all of us, one soul, / who...