El Dorado

Campion Peter

In "El Dorado", Peter Campion explores what it feels like to live in America right now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Splicing cell-phone chatter with translations of ancient poems, jump-cutting from traditional to invented forms, and turning his high-res lens on everything from box stores to trout streams to airport lounges, Campion renders both personal and collective experience with capacious and subtle skill.

About the Author

Peter Campion teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of two previous collections of poems, "Other People" and "The Lions", both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"Campion's gifts for controlling yet spinning the illusion of lost control in a poem are prodigious" – Carol Muske-Dukes, Los Angeles Times

"Peter Campion's "El Dorado" yearns for the 'sweet barbaric closeness of our skin' that, given the way we live among the 'neural simmer / of wired voices' and its 'American everything jammed at once', has become increasingly difficult to find, and yet Campion does find it, and recording its patterns in fluent, fast-paced, dexterous, and formally various lines leads us back to the 'peculiar animal impress' of human encounter in which 'all connection / feels possible again: another's heat / and breath and laughter'. Unlike much contemporary verse that mimics the noise of modern experience, Campion's moves through it to find the deep and ancient melodies that insist on the truth and beauty of human love and friendship".El Dorado" is a richly textured and provocative collection that clearly demonstrates Peter Campion is one of the most vital voices of his generation" – Michael Collier, author of "An Individual History"

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