A new edition of Days Like Prose, Alan Michael Parker’s first book of poems (long out of print), has been published by WordFarm Press. With the inclusion of a new introduction to the 2019 edition, the volume collects poems AMP wrote from the late ’80s until the mid ’90s.
Here’s what Richard Wilbur had to say about Days Like Prose:
“This is an arresting first book; it gives us a poetry deep in particular moments and eloquently alert to the world’s curious and agitated detail. Alan Michael Parker’s poems are full, as poems should be, of surprises which turn out to be simply true.”
And from a review in Publisher’s Weekly:
“With a delicate lucidity, the poems in this first collection explore varieties of solitude. . . . The deft, formal quality of these poems coupled with Parker’s eye for the telling detail make this a book of stirring, quiet beauty.”
And from AMP’s “Introduction to the 2019 Edition”:
“Days Like Prose reads from another century, because it is, even though I hope the poems are neither dated nor outdated (see how those words mean so similarly; how time makes of language an antagonist)….”