<DIV><P>"X" is the kiss and betrayal, the embrace, the crucifixion, the mathematical unknown. In his sixth book of poems, James Galvin writes from a deep, philosophical engagement with the landscape and faces a "vertigo of solitude" with his marriage dissolved, his only daughter grown and gone, and the log house he built by hand abandoned. "What did I love that made me believe it would last?" he asks.</p><P><I>Something has to be true enough to be<BR>Taken for granted.<br>In the hospital I saw<BR>An old man<BR>Caressing the face of an old woman.<br>This same man, young, caressed her face<BR>In just that way.<br>That’s the stillness<BR>At the center of change—<BR>A sadness worth dying for, I swear—<BR>There is no other.<BR></I>—from "Dying into What I’ve Done"</P><P>"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."—<I>The Nation</I></P><P>"In James Galvin we have a superior poet."—<I>American Book Review</I></P><P>"Galvin’s poems have the virtues of precise observation and original language, yes, but what he also brings to the table is a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make the slightest of his poems an architectural pleasure."—<I>Harvard Review</I></P><P><B>James Galvin</B> has published five collections of poetry, most recently <I>Resurrection Update: Collected Poems 1975–1997</I>, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Lenore Marshall/<I>The Nation </I>Prize. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed prose book, <I>The Meadow </I>and a novel, <I>Fencing the Sky</I>. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, where he works as a rancher part of each year, and in Iowa City, where he is a member of the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.</P></DIV>