The searing collection, a cult favorite for decades, by the late Thomas James

I will last forever. I am not impatient--
My skin will wait to greet its old complexions.
I'll lie here till the world swims back again.
--from "Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh"

Thomas James's Letters to a Stranger--originally published in 1973, shortly before James's suicide--has become one of the underground classics of contemporary poetry. In this new edition, with an introduction by Lucie Brock-Broido and four of James's poems never...