Cairo Traffic

In Cairo Traffic, his third book of poems, Lloyd Schwartz asks the Sphinx to explain the riddle "about, you know, / Time and Power and Families-the one you think you / have the answer to. Tell me your answer! / No . . . don't." The search for answers takes the poet to some surprising, often phantasmagoric places, and back again to the self, to dreams, to home, and even to the nursing home where his mother-sphinxlike herself-becomes the person asking the dark questions and providing some unexpected answers. These extraordinary narratives-funny and frightening, seductive and profoundly moving-explore the intersections of character and language, the places where common speech mysteriously transforms itself into poetry. This book, which includes several translations of contemporary Brazilian poems, confirms Schwartz's growing reputation as an intensely compelling and original poet.

Lloyd Schwartz is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the classical music critic for National Public Radio's Fresh Air and the Boston Phoenix. He is the author of two previous books of poetry, These People and Goodnight, Gracie, and his poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and The Best American Poetry. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.