American Fantasies

James Schevill is a poet, playwright, and Emeritus Professor of English at Brown University. He has published numerous collections of poetry, many plays which have been produced in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and a novel based on his experiences in World War II. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Margot.

"James Schevill's The American Fantasies has a Rushmore largeness, a compendious nature, straightforward presentations covering continent-vast experiences over a long period of time, formidable richness of true feelings in a monumental unity of tone and strength. The reacher lives in a large scope of lively realities, their objectivities compounded by layering speculations. This book has a dazzling number of magnificent poems." "The American Fantasies gives a full view of James Schevill's poetic range. In a sense, he is a thoroughly modern, cosmopolitan, intellectually cultivated Edgar Lee Masters — very humane and essentially our most straightforward poet. He has a scholar's appetite for genuine knowledge, a playwright's feeling for vigorous detail illuminating personalities and situations, and a lyric poet's gift for catching emotional essences and nuances. And he is a grown up man writing about things that matter, though never in a contrivedly attitudinizing or boring discursive way."