Out of the Question: Selected Poems (1963-2003)

Lewis Warsh

Out of the Question: Selected Poems 1963-2003 gathers together a generous sample of work from Lewis Warsh’s many earlier collections. Warsh has been associated with the community of New York School writers who first met at The Poetry Project in Manhattan in the late 1960s, but as poet Forrest Gander writes, in a review of Warsh’s book Inseparable, “his influence has been felt nationally and internationally.” Out of the Question includes two long poems: The Suicide Rates, first published in 1967, and The Corset, which appeared in 1986. Novelist Paul Auster described The Corset as “not a poem so much as a new way of seeing the world. There is a stunning intelligence at work here, a fierce, deadpan wit that disturbs and enlightens in equal measure.” Auster’s comment can be applied to all of Warsh’s ongoing experiments, as both a poet and a fiction writer, and Out of the Question is the best possible introduction to anyone unfamiliar with his multi-layered body of work.