Selected Poems is compiled from the best works in Jean Garrigue's eight published collections. Garrigue (1914-72) is recognized as a leading American poet of the fifties and sixties. Among her awards and honors were a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant.

"A wildly gifted poet. . . . Garrigue was our one lyric poet who made ecstasy her home." --Stanley Kunitz"Her way with language was Mozartian, breathtaking in its ability to ring change after change on a theme, Mozartian bursts of language, never leaving the subject, enabling the eye to see clearly, while delighting the ear with sound." --Harvey Shapiro "A brilliant poet. Her idiom is modern, yet has a kind of Book of Hours simplicity." -- Robert Lowell