Traveling in Notions

"Gordon Penn joins Weldon Kees's Robinson and William Meredith's Hazard as a highly memorable protagonist in a series of essential poems by an American. Penn chronicles the triumphs and despairs of an everyman—businessman, father, husband, grandfather, senior citizen, and lover. These are poems whose textures mirror the detritus of our days: phone-in talk shows and Velcro, platinum credit cards and remodeled high-rises. Circumscribed and uplifted by mortality, the poems bear testimony to the blessedness of outreach to others."—Robert Phillips

"In an unsentimental depiction of this Traveller in Notions who 'never considered himself an expert / on anything but his few lines,' we have a rare and affectingly humble representation—and celebration—of the poet. With this fine book, Michael Rosen forces us to reexamine our 'notions' of what poetry can and should do. He clearly achieves his hero's desire 'to steal something that he alone might claim / from the wilderness of grown-up things.' Though it seems so very unpretentious, it is an unusual and worthy achievement, as is his ability to make us believe, with Penn, in spite of so much evidence to the contrary, that 'Hope springs—. It just does."—Jacqueline Osherow