As a poet, the late James Laughlin (1914-1997) was perhaps best known for his love lyrics. Marjorie Perloff has written, "Who else . . . writes such bittersweet, ironic, rueful, erotic, toughminded, witty love poems, poems that run the gamut from ecstasy to loss?" Andrei Codrescu wrote, "Under deep cover as Godfather of Modernism, James Laughlin has secretly raised and made himself into the Poetry Chieftain of Sane Eros, the Catullus of fin-de-siecle America." This small paperback edition of his finest love poems is a perfect memorial to one of the twentieth century's most important men of letters.