A contemporary of well-known poets such as W. H. Auden, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Robert Bly, Sandeen’s first literary influence was Carl Sandburg, with whom he shared the hometown of Galesburg, Illinois. Taken together, the poems in this new and augmented volume demonstrate what many discerning readers have always known—that Ernest Sandeen was one of the best poets of his generation, who also deeply influenced many contemporary poets.

On the occasion of Sandeen’s death in 1997, former Poet Laureate Robert Hass said in an interview, “what I love about [Sandeen’s] poetry is the way it has a sort of sweet gravity to it that makes you feel that the poet was a genuinely wise man. You feel that in his craft as much as in anything else, that the poem says what it needs to say, so that not needing to show off is a form of beauty. There is a kind of seriousness and grace.”

Collected Poems 1953–1994 offers personal and powerful insight into life’s greatest triumphs and tragedies. Meditating on topics such as old age, love and eros, mortality, politics, society, religious faith, and birth, Sandeen delves into the ordinary, inevitable, incomprehensible facts of life. Readers who have followed Sandeen’s work over the decades will be pleased to find his poems once again in print. New readers will discover a poet who cannot fail to delight them.