For decades one of our most honored and beloved poets, Gerald Stern is also, it turns out, a prolific doodler. Sometimes charming, sometimes scathing, sometimes both, the odd little figures and scenes here are reproduced from drawings on napkins, hotel stationary, and the margins of what seem to be lecture handouts. These are remarkable expressions of a quirky world and a clear vision.
 
Long recognized as one of the most original poets in America, Stern is known for his tragi-comic, irascible vision that has been vividly rendered in hundreds of poems. All along, he has also been drafting these whimsical sketches. The Thurber-esque drawings represented here are daft, graphic expressions of Stern’s fearless and shameless sense of self.
 
In addition to expressing a forgiving and cavalier attitude toward aging, these saucy drawings, until now a well-kept secret of Stern’s creative life, capture something essential about his character. By turns profane and playfully romantic, they are another expression of the cutting wit and inimitable charm of Gerald Stern.

Gerald Stern’s recent books of poetry are Early Collected Poems: 1965–1992; Save the Last Dance; This Time: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award; Odd Mercy; and Bread without Sugar. His collection of essays What I Can't Bear Losing was published in 2009. His honors include the Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Conners Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry, the Ruth Lilly Prize, four National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2005 Stern was selected to receive the Wallace Stevens Award for mastery in the art of poetry. For many years a teacher at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Stern now lives in Lambertville, New Jersey.