Feeding the Fear of the Earth (2006) — Patrick Lawler

Patrick Lawler's two earlier collections of poetry are: A Drowning Man is Never Tall Enough (U of Georgia Press) and reading a burning book (Basfal Books). He has been awarded fellowships by the NY State Foundation for the Arts, the NEA, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. In addition to being an Associate Professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry where he teaches Environmental Writing and Nature Literature, he teaches creative writing at Onondoga Community College. He is also part of the Creative Writing Program at LeMoyne College, where he teaches creative writing, playwriting, and writing for performance.

92 pp perfect bound, acid free paper 6" x 9" Winner of the second Many Mountains Moving Press book prize, selected by Susan Terris

ISBN: 978-1-886976-18-4

MSRP: $12.95

In Stock: 10

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Reviews

George Kalamaras, author of The Theory and Function of Mangoes

“Patrick Lawler is a madman. His poems remind me of the cosmic yet earthy hair-dust of profound, secret talk vibrating still in napkin folds at a café table once shared by Marcel Duchamp, Mahatma Gandhi, Madame Curie, Mickey Mantle, and Hélène Cixous. Lawler exhibits startling leaps of imagination that reveal the interconnectivity of all elements of the universe and knows that the true purpose of the poet is—as Gary Snyder has described—to ‘hold the most archaic values on earth.’ We visit the body of his remarkable poetry like stepping into our lives anew, with respect for the chalaza of an egg inhabiting the in-between of many journeys. Sit up straight, close your eyes, place your hands palms up at the juncture between the thighs and the hips, and peer into the pineal gland otherwise known as the third eye: Lawler’s extraordinary poetry is already there, intuitively known to us, vibrating like a foreign yet profoundly familiar dawn, arising from and dissolving back into a continuousl generative source, what we might call love, or bliss, or—as Lawler himself describes—‘How birth sometimes looks like something else.’”

Linda Tomol Pennisi, author of Seamless

“Reaching across time and space and cultures and genders, Patrick Lawler gathers characters as diverse as Christopher Smart, Ed McMahon, and Rosa Parks. Ecological and ethereal, political and historical, philosophical and physical, this astonishing book is a place where anyone who has walked the earth can rub up against anyone else. A place where the light of their sometimes painful, sometimes humorous encounters reveals our connectedness as earth unfolds around us. Lawler’s sensibility is woven of brilliance and tenderness.”