Extant Glyphs

“Billy Strayhorn famously wrote the jazz standard ‘Lush Life,’an anthem of world-weary sophistication, when he was 16. Ted Pearson’s Extant Glyphs, begun in 1964, announces a similarly prodigious talent, one wise beyond his years. Romantic? Absolutely. Yet possessed of classic cool. Across manifold topical surfaces – young love, military life, the city, loss, song – these serial works bring an accuracy of ear, a formal concision and a gritty realism most astonishing to encounter now in retrospect. These poems not only stand the test of time, they blow right past it.” – Kit Robinson