New & Selected Poems

New and Selected Poems: 1957 - 2011 is culled from Robert Sward’s newest and best works, including both previously unpublished poems and selections from his 20+ books of poetry. It is the definitive Sward collection, exhibiting throughout his signature style: outwardly zany and fanciful, but inwardly serious, troubled, and questioning. They cover the territory Sward has tread so well—love, divorce, multiple marriage, aging, loss, and the challenge of bringing up children in a highly unstable world—in his lifelong search for the liberating illumination of IT.

Robert Sward has taught at Cornell University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and UC Santa Cruz. A Fulbright Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, he was chosen by Lucille Clifton to receive a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award. Among his 30 books are Four Incarnations (Coffee House Press), Heavenly Sex, God is in the Cracks (Black Moss Press), and Rosicrucian in the Basement. He is also the author of The Toronto Islands, a best-selling illustrated history of a close-knit community and historic area in the heart of Toronto.

Born and raised in Chicago, Sward served in the U.S. Navy in the combat zone during the Korean War and later worked for CBC Radio and as book reviewer and feature writer for The Toronto Star and The Globe & Mail.