Revealing a world troubled by difference while struggling toward commonality, from the mythic past to the abrasive intimacies of the present, this collection of poems charts the ways social and sexual identities are formed, threatened, altered and preserved.

Respected poet, teacher, and critic Alan Shapiro continues his much-acclaimed explorations of childhood, family, and marriage in Mixed Company. Revealing a world troubled by difference while struggling toward commonality, and with equal attention to historical detail and the poetics of everyday life, from the mythic past to the abrasive intimacies of the present, Shapiro charts the many ways our social and sexual identities are formed, threatened, altered, and, for good or ill, preserved. Deeply felt and ambitious, Mixed Company is an extraordinary book by one of the leading poets writing in America today. "What draws us into Alan Shapiro's Mixed Company is not a conspicuous felicity or any sort of bravura, but the quiet, undaunted way he goes after the truth of human feeling and motive...The poems grope and conjecture, looking for understanding ...but whatever may remain unsolved and insoluble, the poems are full of astonishing insights, a rare articulateness, and what another age called 'knowledge of the human heart.'" --Richard Wilbur

Acknowledgments The Letter
My Mother and a Few Friends Mother: Sun Bathing
Widows
Matriarchs
Wife: Labor
Isabel
Night Terrors
Hecuba
Single Mother
Sylvia
Wife: The Good Daughter
Wife: The Mirror
Pleasure
Lethe
Ex-Wife: Infatuation
Ex-Wife: Homesickness
Sisters
Soul
Lover
Girlfriend
Woman Friend
The Friend
In the Land of the Inheritance
Manufacturing
The Basement
Black Maid
The Fight
Cabbie
Pick Up Game
Between Assassinations