The Well-Tempered
Tantrum, Poems by John Talbot
The Well-Tempered Tantrum
is a warm and intelligent collection of classically-infused poems
in the high formal style. Writing with deceptive ease, John Talbot engages
the reader’s attention with emotional depth and artful technique.
Sample Poems by John Talbot
John Talbot teaches Ancient Greek and Latin in the English Department at Brigham
Young University. He took his doctorate in Classics at Boston University,
concentrating in Augustan Roman poetry. He is the author of a number of articles
on the relationship of ancient languages to English literature, and publishes
poetry widely.
“The poems of John Talbot are superbly made, compactly assembled from
riches as from simplicities, all of them worked with a jeweler’s skill,
every rift loaded with ore. I admire him unreservedly.”—Anthony
Hecht
“I enjoy John Talbot’s work for its live use of language and its
pleasure in the craft. His poems, at once apt and surprising, are at home
and at play within our cultural inheritance and poetry’s traditional
means.”—Richard Wilbur
“With The Well-Tempered Tantrum, John Talbot strides to the
forefront of practitioners of the well-made poem. He writes elegantly and
with firm command; he examines things—often quite unexpected things—from
an unconventional point of view. His collection ought to appeal to anyone
who still believes that a poem needs to regale us, and to have a few brains
in its head.”—X.J. Kennedy
“This is a valuable and civilized book because of the occasions it provides,
over and over again, for the reader to be amused, to be moved, and to admire
its author for his intelligence and skill, and for the learning he uses in
such enlivened ways.”—David Ferry
“A remarkable and accomplished book. I enjoy its wit, its seriousness,
its self-assurance, and its real command of forms—these are chiseled
statues, not plaster casts: better yet, they have something to say.”—Stephen
Burt
ISBN 1932339396, 92 pages, $17.00