Rider: The Rider Quintet, Volume 1

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (1995)

Mark Rudman – poet, essayist, translator, and teacher – has consistently pursued questions of human relationship and identity, and in Rider he takes the poetry of autobiography and confessional to a new plane. In a polyphonic narrative that combines verse with lyrical prose and often humorous dialogue, Rudman examines his own coming-of-age through the lens of his relationships with his grandfather, father, step-father, and son. These memories emerge against the background of a family history anchored in the traditions of Judaism and the culture of the diaspora.