Krypton Nights: Poems (Paris Review Prize in Poetry)

Krypton Nights, Bryan Dietrich's first volume of poetry, is the year 2001 winner of the Paris Review Prize in Poetry. The simplest thing to say about Krypton Nights is that almost every poem within concerns the DC Comics comic book character Superman. The result is priceless. Sometimes funny and often heartbreaking, these poems are anything but trite. Each is a careful construction and serious meditation on our 21st century reality, how we feel and who we are. This book's indulgence in pop culture recalls Dietrich's fellow Kansan Albert Goldbarth, and, like Goldbarth, Dietrich is a stunning poet who is poised to reveal to us our own identity, as quirky or quacky as that may be.