Vectors : Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays

James Richardson is one of the finest poets now writing, and the best contemporary practitioner of the art of aphorism."—Publishers Weekly

"Not since the appearance of W. S. Merwin''s translations and adaptations of aphorisms in Asian Figures, some thirty years ago, has an American poet managed to put down so much delightful and compelling wisdom."—American Literary Review

"No one theme or moral pervades these tesserae of specificity. Rather, Richardson''s elegant compression invites the reader to fill in the blanks with personal experience… Richardson''s knack for the quintessential, sustained for more than a hundred pages, left me satisfied yet hungry for more."— Times Literary Supplement

"Readers will be obsessed by this book; they will memorize passages, give copies to friends, proselytize. That''s because Vectors so generously provides the best that poetry can offer. It is a masterpiece of practicality, beauty, and solace."— Boston Review

"James Richardson''s Vectors... penetrates to the very heart of human nature. I stand looking in the mirror, alert to my own foibles, shaking my head as I tolerate what I know he knows about who I am."— The Georgia Review

"Almost every entry... introduces a new insight, provides a revelation, supplies a surprise... it is a book one wants to spend time with, a wonderfully friendly book, generous, witty and entertaining."— Gulf Coast

"Vectors is the kind of book you read, reread, thumb through, and pick up several extra copies because you want to share the joy you found in perusing it with friends."— Barrow Street

"James Richardson''s Vectors is a book of subversive wonders. Stunningly precise, these brilliant aphorisms and ten-second essays show a mind assessing, reassessing, discovering, and interrogating assumptions in ways that feel diamond-sharp, at once good-natured, quietly sly at times, and always, always, very shrewd. ''It can never be satisfied, the mind, never,'' wrote Wallace Stevens. Vectors is a remarkable testament to such questing, vivid minding, as these aphorisms alight on everything from the nature of perception, to God, success, fear, shame, self-consciousness, love and friendship."—Laurie Sheck