Laurence Goldstein

Southern California is one of two significant places in Laurence Goldstein's fourth collection of poems. In the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, Goldstein encounters the vivid ghosts of an exotic personal landscape: Criswell the TV prophet, Madame Nhu, Mickey Cohen and Bob Hope, among others. He then takes the reader to Ethiopia, the setting of a long dramatic monologue narrated by a young American woman seeking the reincarnation of the medieval Christian potentate Prester John for help in the apocalyptic wars of the 21st century.

Laurence Goldstein was born and raised in Los Angeles. He is a professor of English at the University of Michigan and editor of Michigan Quarterly Review.