Reversing the Spell: New & Selected Poems

For thirty years, the late Thomas McGrath labored over his narrative epic poem, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, first publishing Part One in 1963, and finishing with Part Four in 1985. All previous editions of the individual parts contained errors which the poet intended to correct in a definitive edition. Now, working from McGrath's archival notes, his longtime friend and colleague Dale Jacobson has prepared an authoritative text of the whole poem, making available for the first time in a single volume the greatest epic of our time. Both modern and Homeric, McGrath's expansive, inclusive, semi-autobiographical Letter explores American history, politics, and mythology, guided by the Blue Star Kachina of Hopi mythology as it moves toward the poem's conclusion in the American heartland on Christmas Eve, crisscrossing the landscape in what Library Journal has called "a tremendous odyssey of sense and spirit".