The Arrival of the Future
B.H. Fairchild
Fairchild’s ability not only to choose a story but to pace it and to reveal its
meaning through the unfolding of the narrative is probably unmatched in contemporary
American poetry. The incisive psychology, the vividly descriptive diction, the large
repertoire of vocabulary, the weightiness of his settings and plots: all these contribute
to the delightful sensation that one is reading, simultaneously, the best poetry and best
prose. I cannot think of another living poet capable of delivering such pleasure....Not
since James Wright has there been a poet so skilled at representing the minds and
imaginations of ordinary American working people."
—Kate Daniels, The Southern Review
"With elegance and restrained subtlety, Mr. Fairchild interweaves topics that become
something like musical themes, including the central theme of machine work. . . .Anyone
who can lay claim to the authorship of this much excellent poetry wins my unqualified and
grateful admiration."
—from the introduction by Anthony Hecht
"In an American culture which has always ignored or disdained class issues, Fairchild and Philip Levine are the only contemporary poets... who take work and the working class as their subjects.... Almost throwbacks, like Steinbeck novels or Walker Evans photographs, Fairchild's poems recover an America from which we have always turned our heads."
—David C. Ward, PN Review (England)
about the author
B.H. Fairchild was
born in Houston, Texas and grew up there and in small towns in west Texas, Oklahoma, and
Kansas. He attended the University of Kansas and University of Tulsa and now lives with
his wife and daughter in Claremont, California. His awards include the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize, a NEA Fellowship
in Poetry, a California Arts Grant, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship to the Sewanee Writers
Conference, a National Writers’ Union First Prize, and an AWP Anniversary Award. His
poetry collections include Local Knowledge, The System of Which the Body
Is One Part, and Flight. He is also the author of Such Holy Song, a
study of William Blake. His poems have appeared in Southern Review, Poetry, Triquarterly,
Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Sewanee Review and other journals.
Author photo by Joanna Elderidge Morrissey
two poems from the arrival of the future
