The Arc of the Day / the Imperfectionist

Poetry. Steve Shrader's poetry combines elements of the tradition of Dickinson, Stevens and Ashbery, with the location of O‘ahu. These posthumously published poems represent an important addition/recovery of the literature of Hawai‘i, as well as of contemporary American poetry more generally. "Steve Shrader's subtle and accomplished poetic thinking casts a far wider net than the Hawaiian islands—it ponders literature, music, history, politics, the world...
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Poetry. Steve Shrader's poetry combines elements of the tradition of Dickinson, Stevens and Ashbery, with the location of O‘ahu. These posthumously published poems represent an important addition/recovery of the literature of Hawai‘i, as well as of contemporary American poetry more generally.

"Steve Shrader's subtle and accomplished poetic thinking casts a far wider net than the Hawaiian islands—it ponders literature, music, history, politics, the world of ideas generally—but ultimately, as he tells us, poetry like politics is local. Local for Shrader meant that ironwood-bordered Waimanalo beach where a man sees a biplane pilot skywriting, where he watches his son 'afloat, asleep upon the wrinkled and gently sloping surface of an ocean,' where the same man 'enters the sea, portal to true peace / his only baggage, red trunks.' The poems in THE ARC OF THE DAY are the strong/delicate work of an ironist distilling the air, sky, water of a maximalist landscape into their minimalist essence. The later, longer poems of THE IMPERFECTIONIST, in contrast, are rich dense narratives foregrounding character and voice, substantial evidence of the strong new direction his talent was taking him. These two collections, each exceptional in its own way, are bookended by a first-rate critical analysis and an insightful memoir, making this poet's final volume a four-in-one-treasure."—Victoria Nelson