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GROSSBERG- UNDERWATER LENGTHS IN A SINGLE BREATH-Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath is the winner of the 2005 Richard Snyder Publication Prize. Each title of Benjamin Grossberg’s poems might well serve as the name for his entire book, from “Conclusion of a Poem begun by Marlowe” to “From the Shore” and “Renaissance Fair.” This attractive concurrence signifies that however various his inspirations, Grossberg’s exhalations are always from the same lungs, the same brain, the same heart. His is a united sensibility, the kind we usually attribute to “The Time of Myths,” as the poet calls it. This extraordinarily rich and entertaining first book is unique in my experience for its eager and outrageous connections with the masters who enjoyed such mythical thinking – Shakespeare, Whitman – as well as for its daring departures from what those same masters, so lovingly ransacked, might ever have undertaken. Grossberg is learned though anything but knowing, playful but in dead earnest, urbane yet refreshingly pastoral. I rejoice that these poems are in the world of American letters. -- Richard Howard