Abundant Life: New & Selected Poems

by Hank Lazer

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781946104571
Publisher:	Chax Press
Publication date:	05/01/2025
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Hank Lazer , PhD (Author), Tuscaloosa, Alabama (United States of America) - Hank Lazer has published thirty-five books of poetry, including his most recent, As We Vanish from Public View (7 Points Press) and field recordings of mind in morning (with 15 music-poetry tracks with Holland Hopson on banjo – available on YouTube). Along with Abundant Life: New & Selected Poems, Lazer has published a companion volume of essays, poetics, and interviews: What Were You Thinking: Essays 2006– 2024 (Lavender Ink). In April 2015, Lazer was selected for the state of Alabama’ s highest literary award, the Harp

Table of Contents

Contents

from Days 11

from Elegies & Vacations 29

from The New Spirit 65

from Portions 87

from N18 109

from Poems Hidden in Plain View 121

from Thinking in Jewish 153

from Evidence of Being Here: Beginning in Havana (N27) 169

from Slowly Becoming Awake (N32) 181

from Poems that Look Just Like Poems 209

from Covid 19 Sutras 243

from field recordings of mind in morning 275

from When theTme Comes 293

from PIECES 313

from As We Vanish from Public View 339

New Poems 361

Notes i