The Summer of the Swans

Poetry. "A long overdue collection, WEST OF MIDNIGHT places new works alongside pieces drawn from a decades-spanning career to illustrate the breadth of an influential and singular voice in poetry. Franz Douskey's insights are uniquely his, his voice direct and his imagination meteoric. Douskey has lived long and large.... The poems are rich in wit, irreverence and a furious honesty. Everything is autobiographical. From intimate relationships, political quagmires, baseball and eroticism, Douskey wields an acerbic wit and a delicate command of tone to dive into the contradictions that make us human. From the haunted urban alleys of a turbulent childhood to his rhapsodic journeys through the nocturnal deserts of the Southwest, Douskey revels both in the absurdity of modern civilization and the heart-stopping beauty of the natural world"—Robert Reinhardt.