The Common Man, Maurice Manning’s fourth collection, is a series of ballad-like narratives, set down in loose, unrhymed iambic tetrameter, that honors the strange beauty of the Kentucky mountain country he knew as a child, as well as the idiosyncratic adventures and personalities of the oldtimers who were his neighbors, friends, and family. Playing off the book’s title, Manning demonstrates that no one is common or simple. Instead, he creates a detailed, complex, and poignant portrait—by turns serious and hilarious, philosophical and speculative, but ultimately tragic—of a fast-disappearing aspect of American culture. The Common Man’s accessibility and its enthusiastic and sincere charms make it the perfect antidote to the glib ironies that characterize much contemporary American verse. It will also help to strengthen Manning’s reputation as one of his generation’s most important and original voices.

The former Poet Laureate of the United States, Nemerov gives us a lucid and precise twist on the commonplaces of everyday life. The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1978. "Howard Nemerov is a witty, urbane, thoughtful poet, grounded in the classics, a master of the craft. It is refreshing to read his work. . . . "—Minneapolis Tribune "The world causes in Nemerov a mingled revulsion and love, and a hopeless hope is the most attractive quality in his poems, which slowly turn obverse to reverse, seeing the permanence of change, the vices of virtue, the evanescence of solidities and the errors of truth."—Helen Vendler, New York Times Book Review

Included in the anthology are previously published poems contained within SECTOR#7 and of Ares and Men, also Sketches and Reflections of 2012. This covers in full the poetic output of the author since 2009. The overall design is a deliberate step away from the abstract modern poetry preoccupied with syllabic dissection and abstract notions to the intentional exclusion of tangible subjects. Modern poetry isnt supposed to make sense, were told, and it is more a play with words and sounds. The free-flowing style here, whilst of variable meter, does no more than serve the purpose. Substance rule over style first and last. It is how it used be before modernists turned it on the head. In this book, preoccupation is with here and now; real people in all kinds of predicament and lifelike situations. It will be instantly recognized. It comes down on sham democracy, war mongers, banksters, and other vermin. Spared is none, least of all the author himself. His sporting inadequacies exposed for one should tickle the funny bone. Above all, the book is an antiwar crusade. On second level, it is on side of those creating the wealth, not those cashing in on the fat spoils. It is poetry of the common man in the street. Enough for young and old and young at heart

Poetry without pretense - stories about real life to be enjoyed by all!

Merle Haggard is known as "the poet of the common man." His songs are some of the most important and influential in the history of country music, on par with the likes of those by Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams. Through a life as tumultuous as his music, scarred by struggles with inner demons, incarceration and addiction - all of which he has brutally and directly confronted through his lyrics - Haggard has emerged with an American songbook that captures the rough side of life with an unblinking eye gazing on the workings of the human heart. This collection comes on the heels of his acclaimed album If I Could Only Fly, his first new studio album in four years, which finds the former wildman coping with aging, taking on familial responsibilities, and learning to appreciate the wonders of home life versus the pitfalls of the highway. Haggard's lyrics demonstrate why this acclaimed member of the Country Music Hall of Fame is a legend who will live forever.