Man-Song

A celebration of love, an ode to virility--Man-Song reveals the passions and longings of the young poet John G. Neihardt. These twenty-seven erotic poems, published just after he had married the sculptor Mona Martinsen, testify to the power of attraction between men and women and the strong bonds forged by male friends and comrades in adversity and triumph. These enduring themes, girding his masterpieces to come, are vividly on display here as the poet seeks balance between the material and spiritual worlds, the caress and meditation, the erotic and the divine. Following the sensual trail of such poems as "A Vision of Women," "Lonesome in Town," and "Unrest," we discover not the vistas of Neihardt's beloved American West, but himself--a rare and fascinating glimpse of the highly personal desires and dreams of arguably America's great epic poet.