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 BernsteinHank 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