George Starbuck

George Starbuck (1931-1996) was an American poet of the neo-formalist school. His work is marked by clever rhymes, witty asides, and the fusing of Romantic themes with cynicism towards modern life. Starbuck called his style of formalism SLABS, for Standard Length And Breadth Sonnets. He was not widely appreciated by mainstream culture during his lifetime, but in the few years since his death his work has earned favor from both literary critics and casual readers of poetry. Two new collections of his poems have been published in the last few years (Poems Selected from Five Decades and Visible Ink) and have helped him win a wider audience. Starbuck's best-known poems include "Tuolomne," "On an Urban Battlefield," "Sonnet With a Different Letter At the End of Every Line," "Legend of the Four Thousand and Four Swallowtails," and "Northernsign."

Partial Bibliography (incomplete)

• Poems Selected from Five Decades, November 2003
• Visible Ink, March 2002
• The Argot Merchant Disaster: Poems New and Selected, August 1982 (winner of a Lenore Marshall poetry prize)
• Desperate Measures, August 1978
• Elegy in a Country Church Yard, September 1975
• Bone Thoughts, 1960

External Links to Poems

"Sonnet With A Different Letter At The End Of Every Line"
"Tuolomne"