Unbound Edition Press today announced it will publish David Wojahn’s essay collection Addressee: Essays on How Poetry Matters. Wojahn’s third collection of essays on poetry, Addressee is at once a sweeping and conscientious analysis of poetry’s importance in the context of heightened cultural politics and rapidly mutating communication. This careful scrutiny is matched by moving personal narrative and engaging storytelling. The title is scheduled for publication in October 2025.
In addition to his two previous collections of essays on contemporary poetry, Wojahn is the author of nine collections of verse, among them Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1983-2004, a Named Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and World Tree, winner of the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize. His awards and honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for The Arts, and the O.B. Hardison Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He lives in Richmond Virginia, where he is Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a faculty member of the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Of Wojahn’s 2015 collection of criticism, From the Valley of Making, Lisa Russ Spaar wrote, “Fearless, honest, witty, ferociously smart, pop-culturally savvy, and in possession of a prodigious, wide-ranging intellect, Wojahn can travel in any one piece among the likes of Quentin Tarantino, St. Teresa of Avila, and reality TV with a dazzling, perspicuous brio that leaves the reader newly alive to language, the world and the self.”
Peter Campion, executive editor at Unbound Edition Press, acquired Addressee for the house and is editing the work. He notes, “Few poet-critics, at least since the days of Randall Jarrell, have enjoyed the authority that Wojahn wears with ease and good humor in Addressee. I find these essays totally absorbing and am amazed by the range of Wojahn’s subjects and tones. Here’s righteous indignation about the Age of Trump, and here’s warm good humor. Here’s critical close reading at its most perceptive, and here’s deeply moving personal narrative.”
Patrick Davis, publisher and editor in chief at Unbound Edition Press, said: “We exist to publish important and powerful work of cultural significance. Fearlessness takes many forms, including unyielding intellectual rigor. David Wojahn’s outstanding defense of poetry’s contemporary relevance is inspired and inspiring. We are honored to publish it and add to what is meaningful and lasting in this history of American letters.”
