James Tate's poems are evocative, provocative, funny, subtle, eccentric, occasionally disturbing, and wildly outrageous. His surrealist style strikes its own utterly new and original note in American poetry, transforming our everyday world into sublime burlesque—a world where women give birth to wolves, wild babies are found in gardens, and Saint Nick visits on a hot July day. Tate's signature style draws on a marvelous variety of voices and characters, all of which sound vaguely familiar but are each fantastically unique, brilliant, and deeply particular.

The Eternal Ones of the Dream features Tate's work from the last two decades, selected from seven books of poetry. The poems span from 1990's Distance from Loved Ones to 2009's The Ghost Soldiers, showcasing the impressive breadth of talent. As W. S. Merwin said of Tate, "Mr. Tate's gift is such that many of [his] poems move me at least to plain envy of what he can do."