Works by
D.A. Powell
(Writer)
[1963 - ]

Biography/Memoirs

• By Myself: An Autobiography (2009) with David Trinidad

Poetry

• Chronic (2009)
  The first poetry collection by D. A. Powell since his remarkable trilogy of Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
  
  so many of the best days seem minor forms of nearness
  that easily falls among the dropseed: a rind, a left-behind
                             —from “no picnic”

  In these brilliant new poems from one of contemporary poetry’s most intriguing, singular voices, D. A. Powell strikes out for the farther territories of love and comes back from those fields with loss, with flowers faded, “blossom blast and dieback.” Chronic describes the flutter and cruelty of erotic encounter, temptation, and bitter heartsickness, but with Powell’s deep lyric beauty and his own brand of dark wit.

Trilogy

1. Tea (1998)
   Visually arresting, Tea is an experimental poem-cycle with traditional formal techniques built into its wild surface.

2. Lunch (2000)
   A direct and moving account of a young man's life in a time of plague.

3. Cocktails (2004) -- Finalist, 2004 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Poetry
   In Cocktails, D. A. Powell closes his contemporary Divine Comedy with poems of sharp wit and graceful eloquence born of the AIDS pandemic. These poems, both harrowing and beautiful, strive toward redemption and light within the transformative and often conflicting worlds of the cocktail lounge, the cinema, and the Gospels.