With Nostalgia for the Future: New and Selected Poems, 1984-2023, award-winning poet Gregory Djanikian returns to the literary scene with a collection that spans and celebrates his prolific career.
Written over several decades, Nostalgia for the Future takes for its many subjects romantic love and its difficulties, the horrors of the Armenian genocide of 1915, the émigré experience and the joys and struggles of acculturation, the allure of landscapes and vast distances, the polarity of our material life on earth and our longing for what is ethereal and elusive, all in tones that are humorous, elegiac, contemplative, lyrical and suffused with a gratitude for the mysteriousness and wonder of life itself.
Praise for the Poetry of Gregory Djanikian
“…Djanikian is masterful in his control of where a poem is going — and the reader with it…” — Booklist
“Falling Deeply into America is one of the most even-tempered and joyful collections I’ve encountered recently… And in the Waspy realms of American poetry, it is a unique and welcome point of view.” — Henri Cole, Poetry
“…Djanikian reflects on social issues, relationships, family history, domestic life and our connection to nature, always conscious of our place in the larger world… Poets will study this book to learn how Djanikian works such magic…” — Kathleen Aguero, Solstice Magazine
Born in Alexandria, Egypt of Armenian parentage, Gregory Djanikian came to the United States when he was eight years old and spent his boyhood in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. For many years, he was the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of seven collections of poetry from Carnegie Mellon, most recently of which is Sojourners of the In-Between. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, and in many anthologies including Best American Poetry, Good Poems, American Places (Viking), Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem (Knopf), Seriously Funny (Georgia), Becoming Americas: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Library of America), Poem in Your Pocket (The Academy of American Poets), Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (Norton), and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Random House).
Nostalgia for the Future is set to release on April 1st, 2025 by Green Writers Press. Support the International Armenian Literary Alliance’s programming by pre-ordering it on their Bookshop storefront.
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