Abstract

This article offers a critical analysis of the recent work of the American poet James Minnis, focusing specifically on his long poems In the shadow of the internal and Lucky, unlucky. The author reconstructs the biographical and geographical context of the poet’s relocation to the Maramureș region of Romania (Chuizbaia), demonstrating how this new existential environment has fostered a heightened sense of intimacy and radical directness in his poetic voice. The text examines a major editorial and graphic shift within Minnis’s established idiom: the juxtaposition of traditional linear blank verse alongside facsimiles of his original notebook manuscripts. Furthermore, the article critiques the poet’s ontological and postmodern tenets – rooted in the concepts of “nothingness as a creative catalyst,” the non-linearity of time, and the secularization of consciousness – arguing that Minnis’s obscure, multi-layered literary output ultimately transcends his own theoretical and intellectual declarations.