More Than Peace and Cypresses

Cyrus Cassells

Cyrus Cassells’s fourth volume of poems explores the poet’s spiritual and artistic patrimony. In the wake of his father’s death from cancer, the poet returns to Italy, France, and Spain—countries that nurtured him as a young writer—to investigate the sources of his inspiration. Vincent Van Gogh, Cesare Pavese, Eugenio Montale, Giorgio Bassani, Attilio and Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Federico García Lorca are invoked, revisited, and revered to brace the poet through his mourning.

ISBN: 9781556592140

Format: Paperback

About the Author

Cyrus Cassells, the 2021-2022 Poet Laureate of Texas, is the author of eleven books of poetry: including The World That the Shooter Left Us, a Housatonic Book Award finalist; Is There Room for Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch?, named a Best New Poetry Book by the New York Public Library; Everything in Life is Resurrection: Selected Poems, 1982-2022); and Lorca to the Umpteenth Power, forthcoming in 2026, a prose and poetry memoir rooted in Federico García Lorca’s Granada, featuring art by Octavio Quintanilla. Cassells is …

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Reviews

“In what the poet calls his ‘book of heroes,’ Cassells returns to Italy, France, and Spain after his father’s death and resurrects the poetic voices that guided and inspired him in his youth… [Cassells’s] enormous passion and soft touch create images that are both delicious and haunting. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

“… These lyrical, pastoral poems reveal how far the shattered heart reaches into the earth for poetic truth.” —Bloomsbury Review

“What readers will love is the quietly gorgeous language Cassells delivers as he copes with loss.” —Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

“Cassells’s poems are enthralling—they are heartfelt, with the largeness of spirit found in great literature… Cassells is one of the most exciting poets writing in the US today.” —Rita Dove