The Revisionist and The Astropastorals

Crase Douglas

Douglas Crase is best known for a single book of poems, "The Revisionist" (1981). In the year of its publication John Ashbery urged Carcanet to consider it for British publication and now, thirty-eightyears later, the book appears together with the chapbook entitled "The Astropastorals" (2017), which together constitute the core of Crase's poetic work.

He is among the crucial poets of his generation, but until now hiswork has not been widely available. "The Revisionist" went out of print in1987. Its influence persists, "The Oxford Book of American Poetry" says, asa "formidable underground reputation" here surfacing decisively at last, with Mark Ford's essay providing advocacy and context for the Britishreader. An heir to Whitman, to Crane, to Ashbery, Crase deploys whathe calls an American "civil meter", throwing down a wry distinctivelyAmerican prosodic gauntlet to readers and writers that is likely to beas discussed as Williams's "variable foot".

About the Author

Douglas Crase's first collection, "The Revisionist" (1981), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, American Book Award, and earned a Witter Bynner Prize in poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His chapbook, "The Astropastorals", was named a 2017 Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of an unorthodox commonplace book, Amerifil.txt, an early, influential essay on John Ashbery in the anthology Beyond Amazement, and a collection of essays and addresses, Lines from London Terrace.

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