The Calligraphy Shop

In his debut collection Ben Downing reimagines the possibilities of American poetry in terms of history, structure, rhythm, and rhyme. The poems in "The Calligraphy Shop" are highly formal but well shaped, elegantly poised yet picky in their choice of words, subjects, iambs, and trochees. Extremely erudite and often hilarious, sometimes bawdily so, this is an original collection by a brilliant young poet.