James Wagner (poet)

The poet and critic Joyelle McSweeney wrote that the poems in his first collection, the false sun recordings, "form a semi-coherent push-me/pull-you-type dialogue about stability and wholeness, by turns humorous... and serious.

His third and most recent collection of poetry, Thrown, poems to paintings by Bracha L. Ettinger, was cited by poet Eileen Tabios for its imaginative intensity, ambition and lyrical prowess.

He prefaces his entire collection, in fact, with a quote from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, ‘Can I say ‘bububu’ and mean ‘If it doesn’t rain I shall go for a walk’?,’ which sets the stage perfectly.

The poet and critic Vanessa Place has said of Geisttraum: “Language as solid and fearsome as the religious American Middle West: plain, transparent and similarly constituent of its own allegorical surface.

A sussurating surface that threatens always to slip under itself and away.”[12] Significant influences on his work include: Paul Celan, Marjorie Welish, Leslie Scalapino, César Vallejo, Clark Coolidge, Lissa Wolsak, Tan Lin, Steve Timm, Michael Burkard, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Paul Maliszewski, John Cage, Buddhist philosophy, Samuel Beckett, Peter Handke, and Werner Herzog.