Durable Goods is a book of a sharply imagined poems about everyday technology. Writing in the Dinggedicht or thing-poem tradition of poets like Rilke, Ponge, and Marianne Moore, James Pollock calls to surprising life everything from microwaves to kettles, sprinklers to umbrellas, with a precision both unerring and effortless. By conjuring the essential spirit of each object, the poet reveals the tools and appliances that surround us as both sympathetic reflections of ourselves'Äîour fear, love, rage, hope and grief'Äîand strange beings with inner lives of their own. 'ÄúIt knows how much pressure you've been under,'Äù Pollock writes, of the barometer, 'Äúthat you could use a change of atmosphere.'Äù Read together, these poems immerse us in an imagined world with the power to make us see our own in a new way. Suffused with dazzling wordplay, razor wit, and rippling sonic effects, the poems richly reward being read aloud. Indeed, for Pollock, the most durable good is language itself.

James Pollock grew up in southwestern Ontario. He is a graduate of York University and completed his doctorate at the University of Houston where he held several fellowships in poetry. He was a John Woods Scholar in the Prague Summer Program at Charles University in the Czech Republic, and a work-study scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, Vermont. Pollock's critical reviews and essays have appeared in journals on both sides of the border, including Contemporary Poetry Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, The New Quarterly, Books in Canada, Literary Review of Canada and Canadian Notes & Queries. His poetry has been published in The Paris Review, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Daily, Canadian Literature, AGNI, Maisonneuve, Southern Poetry Review, Geist, The Del Sol Review and elsewhere. In 2010 he was short-listed in Best Canadian Poetry. He is an Associate Professor at Loras College, in Dubuque, Iowa, where he teaches poetry, writing and Canadian Literature. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

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