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

978-1932339390, 92 pages

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