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"This
is a book filled with joy. The works are marked as well be reverence.
The guiding genius is Thelonious Monk's - the poems dance, they also
kick. The days of Hank Lazer's Days shake up the lyrics in which
they are inscribed." Lyn Hejinian, Poet, and Professor of English
at U.C.-Berkeley
"This
playfulness casts us under the spell of a 'hip gnosis' (to use one of
Lazer's outlandish puns) that open us, in the way only music and poetry
can, to the intimations of love, friendship, and spiritual searching
found everywhere, every day, inside these pages." John Gery, Poet,
and University Research Professor, University of New Orleans
"These
are beautiful - and peaceful - poems, signs of a mind and hand immediate
with its materials." Norman Fischer, Poet, and Zen Buddhist priest
"Days locates itself in the charged rift between immanent
and daily experience and our textual heritage. Hank Lazer seamlessly
ventriloquizes such poets at Stein, Pound, Eigner, and Plath, sometimes
against the grain, making the familiar words new." Rae Armantrout,
Poet, and Professor at U.C.-San Diego
Days
is Hank Lazer's first large collection of poetry to appear in six years.
Written over the span of one-year-and-a-day, Lazer's new book is a laboratory
space for experimentation with the resources and possibilities of the
short line and for new modes of lyricism. His previous books of poetry
include Simple Harmonic Motions (INK-A! Press), As It Is (Diaeresis
Chapbooks), 3 of 10 (Chax Press), Early Days of the Lang Dynasty
(Meow Press), Doublespace: Poems 1971-1989 (Segue Books), and
INTER(IR)RUPTIONS (Generator Press). With Charles Bernstein,
he edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University
of Alabama Press. His two volume collection of critical writings on
contemporary poetry, Opposing Poetries, was published in 1996
by Northwestern University Press. Along with Jake Berry and Wayne Sides,
Lazer is a founding member of The Alabama Poetry Ensemble. A Professor
of English, Lazer is Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at
the University of Alabama.
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