UA Author’s Book Recreates the Heart of Poetry

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – “Elegies & Vacations,” a new book of poetry by Dr. Hank Lazer, has been described as an ambitious attempt to “recreate the heart of poetry itself.” This collection of poems explores the relationships of the living and the dead. The book contains 11 poems, each different from the next, addressing emotionally charged issues ranging from the loss of a beloved family member to the sometimes trying ritual of the family vacation.

Lazer’s poems are described as having an “unusual emotional intimacy” as he tests the ability of experimental poetry to address some of the personal areas of life.

Lazer, UA assistant vice president for undergraduate programs and services and professor of English, will be signing copies of “Elegies & Vacations” on Thursday, Feb. 26, from 8-10 a.m. in the lobby of Rose Administration Building and from noon-1:30 p.m. at the Starbucks coffee shop in Ferguson Center, and on Thursday, March 4, at 4 p.m. on the second floor of the Gorgas Library.

“Elegies & Vacations,” now available from Salt Publishing, is Lazer’s 11th book of poetry and his fourth large collection of poetry, following “Days” (Lavender Ink, 2002), “3 of 10” (Chax Press, 1996), and “Doublespace: Poems 1971-1989” (Segue, 1992). “Elegies & Vacations” can be found on campus at the UA Supply Store.

The heart of Lazer’s new book contains a long poem, “Deathwatch for My Father,” that follows the author’s thoughts as he shares final time with his father who is dying of leukemia. This poem, written like a long journal that tracks the poet’s father’s final months, tests “the capacities of innovative poetry in the face of death of a loved one,” the publisher says, adding, “This book explores relationships with the dead – from the poet’s father, to John Cage, to Kenneth Burke, to George Oppen – while also, through family vacations, projecting forward to ask ‘to what are we ancestral’ [the first poem in the book].”

Cynthia Hogue, poetry professor at Arizona State University who writes in the journal Rain Taxi, called Lazer a poet “who might be described as a stylistic risk-taker as well as forager in the treasure of the house of words,” while Michael Basinsky of the Poetry/Rare Books Collection at SUNY-Buffalo, says, “Lazer blends the purposes of poetry and the ISMs of various camps and forges a series of poems that is fun to read with the heart and the mind.”

The following is the first poem in “Elegies and Vacations.”

“to what are we ancestral”
do they speak within me
now that they are dead
they were here what are
they to me & what were they
couldn’t they have been
nearly anyone telling those
stories they made
a claim on me i carried
forward their stories i pledged
to do so & so
took up this calling of words
i did it with their ear
nonnative to this language
& i unaccustomed to
this genre & the people of it

For an image of the book cover, go to http://saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844710084.htm.