Description
Poetry. These are poems profuse with passion and a sometimes hidden but always savage lust for life. The collection begins with attractive, jazzy pizzazz and over four sections deepens, broadens, and sweetens, as a pastoral symphony might, into gratitude for life, nature, and the mysteries of faith and hope. It is an astonishing journey, beautiful and hopeful. Lader is a skilled craftsman who knows just when to pull up at the end of his poems, put on the brakes, and send us flying.
"Bruce Lader's new collection, FUGITIVE HOPE, begins with attractive, jazzy pizzazz and over four sections deepens, broadens, and sweetens, as a pastoral symphony might, into gratitude for life, nature, and his wife, who bears the mysteries of faith and hope. In the lovely 'Hide & Seek,' the speaker is only 'certain of this abracadabra / moment ludicrous with / giddy freedom.' Witty and cutting, 'Memo from Another Planet' imagines Earth's quick, quiet capitulation to conquest. Near book's end, we are listening to 'covert concerts in these woods,' and in 'Vision of Uncertainty,' the poet dreams of seeing spring's advent in his wife's eyes after his death. It is an astonishing journey, beautiful and hopeful."—Kelly Cherry
"In FUGITIVE HOPE, Bruce Lader is an adept guide covering the vast territory of this fresh, lively collection. He offers compelling, sympathetic portraits of a wide range of individuals, from soldiers to judges, from Diogenes to Orpheus. A skilled craftsman, he knows just when to pull up at the end of his poems, put on the brakes, and send us flying."—Jim Daniels
"These are tightly structured, tightly controlled poems profuse with passion and a sometimes hidden but always savage lust for life, formed of 'the legacy of gargoyle and... of cherubs hovered in balance.'"—Jared Smith
Author Bio
Bruce Lader is the author of four other volumes of poetry, most recently, Embrace (Big Table Publishing, 2010) and Landscapes of Longing (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2009). Discovering Mortality (March Street Press, 2005) was a finalist for the 2006 Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Winner of the 2010 Left Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition, his poems have appeared in Poetry, New York Quarterly, Confrontation, The Humanist, New Millennium Writings, Fulcrum, Harpur Palate, Against Agamemnon: War Poems anthology, and over 100 other magazines and anthologies. He has received a writer-in-residence fellowship from The Wurlitzer Foundation and an honorarium from the College of Creative Studies at UC-Santa Barbara. Formerly a Special Education teacher, he is the Director of Bridges Tutoring, an organization in Raleigh, North Carolina, educating multicultural students.
Author City: W SOMERVILLE, MA USA