Abundant Life

Portions, spirit, elegy, lyrics, awakenings, sutra, serendipity, loss, mindedness, rebelling, reveling, unraveling, sounderings, melody, offkey, noisily, rhythm, negation, improvisation, abandon, deflection, renewal, cascade, cadence, grace, weaving, enigma, shekinah: a door, a jar. These are a few of his favorite things. -- Charles Bernstein Hank Lazer's Abundant Life: New and Selected Poems shows how Lazer thinks with and through writing. All of it is literally experimental in that each new project is a challenge he gives himself, a way to experience life differently. Here we have his " shape writing" but also short, jagged lyrics reminiscent of Creeley, and long narrative poems about losing one's parents. What unites this work is Lazer's joint commitment to mindfulness (a quest to find the sacred within the everyday) and to relationality, to dialogue. His books arise and exist in conversation with others: philosophers-- such as Levinas and Merleau-Ponty-- as well as Zen monks, and admired poets including Emily Dickinson and Creeley. This work may be heady, but it is also deeply human. -- Rae Armantrout