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More information at Ashland Poetry Press

American Urn draws from Irwin’s collected and award-winning works to date, including selections from Against the Meanwhile (1988), Quick, Now, Always (1996), White City (2000), Bright Hunger (2004), Tall If (2008), and Large White House Speaking (2013).

Praise for the poems included in this collection…

Large White House Speaking

Large White House Speaking is a book of startling marvels . . .Mark Irwin is one of our best poets, and this is his best book yet.” – LAURA KASISCHKE


Tall If

NOTABLE BOOK OF 2008  – Bloomsbury Review, International Poetry Review

“Even as individual lines and phrases achieve a luminous clarity, there remains a brooding circularity to Tall If, in part the apprehension of mortality at mid-life but in part something stranger.” – G. C. WALDREP, West Branch


Bright Hunger

“ . . . virtuoso performances . . . an intensity, an urgency about the evanescence of life and the various forces pressing on the human spirit and psyche.” – PAMELA ALEXANDER, Field


White City

“Subtlety of ear, of phrasing, of language altogether, and a light-play of feeling, disguise the urgency and evocative range of Mark Irwin’s grave sensibility. The richness and evanescence of the moment surface repeatedly in his lines.” – W. S. MERWIN

“This is a book one wants to taste again and again.” – JOHN ASHBERY


Quick, Now Always

“ . . . a jagged, heartbroken, and ecstatic excursus on the late 20th century, a race through troubled paradise.” – RANDALL WATSON, Chelsea