Brett Foster has published poetry and criticism in Boston Review, Hudson Review, Image, the Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, Poetry East, the Best New Poets series and the Library of America's American Religious Poems. A past Wallace Stegner fellow in poetry, he teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at Wheaton College.

Books by Brett Foster:

Other poems on the web by Brett Foster:
"West on I-70 Across the Land of Lincoln"
"Final Night, in Allston"
"Lamentation: September 18"

Brett Foster's Home Page.

About The Garbage Eater:

"From the 'garbage eaters' of Berkeley to old Lazarus of Bethany, from the uniquely beautiful bridal caves of Missouri's Ozarks to those ubiquitous Olive Gardens, where 'a million people eat every day,' Brett Foster finds poetry in kitsch and cathedrals alike. His attention is omnivorous but his touch, his poetic talent, is refined, particular, and piercing. In this wise and accomplished first book, The Garbage Eater, Foster shows us what we too often forget. that the great gift of learning is clarity, and the truest measure of the soul is compassion. Just so, in its deepest moments Brett Foster's poetry is, like faith, a means of transport that moues us from profane experience to stillness and owe."
—David Baker

"Brett Foster's intense, original poems join the physical to spirit and intellect in lines whose current runs as much from contemporary American English as from the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton. Rodin's Thinker, the perfect emblem for this book, hunched 'with his wide, inhuman knuckles / lodged on his mouth, bows to the physical.' From meditations on Dumpster diving, shock rock, and the DMV to daily life gleaned from ancient Egyptian papyri, foster draws a sacramental vision of our damaged humanness, 'the clear face of dust."
—Rosanna Warren

"Brett Foster's The Garbage Eater is a trenchant, lyrical performance that flouts any conventional expectations. His work is shot through with an aching awareness of transcendence or the lack of it. 'From the Tarmac,' 'Contrition,' and 'The Foreman at Rest' are only a few of the poems that have stayed with me, in their tenderness, sadness, precision, and miraculous lack of sentimentality. An exceptional collection."
—Rachel Hadas