Hank Lazer

Posted on by

 

the once particular                      12.23.2024
atom you were
i that i
that meticulously crafted
thing that i
that i all
along believed i
was tide laps
the shore at
the old eroded
beach that i
that i played
on as a
child space made
for others to
imagine being themselves
important & central
in a momentary
story walls &
quiet tides arriving

 

what are you                               12.29.2024
protecting there is
light in the
world the light
is the world
as you know
in your body’s
life let there
be light each
morning a perfect
occurrence space empty
space between closely
placed stones each
of us adjacent
to what if
we could see
it this arising
& quiet transformation
after an evening
storm sunlight &
tree shadows mind

 

his last word                               12.10.2024
was not a
word burrowed as
he was into
a well-made silence
hers was a
word blurted &
screamed MA MA
shouldn’t you go
out with a
word mass of
said & thought
snail trail of
thinking glistering for
ward slowly broken
speech a whisper
a nod what
word is boat
to go across
when mind returns
to its composite
elements

 

These poems are from the 7th section (Three Is A) of my forthcoming 37th book of poetry, The Silver Bowl Is Filled with Snow (Dos Madres Press). The poems in that section of the book are all composed of three words per line. The overall book is really a series of discovered or invented or asked-of-me (by?) forms, ranging from the long sentence-like lines in the 2nd section of the book (Enlarging Upon) to these compressed, colliding three-word-per-line poems. To a large degree, the various forms or procedures in the book come from a felt sense of what a page might look like when written in this manner. So, too, the Three Is A section of the book leans heavily on the initiating sounds (and sound collisions or twists of syntax) that got my attention (and became the longest, most sustained section of the book). It’s all about going where the juice is, where the current is, until it’s not.
Hank Lazer has published thirty-six books of poetry, including most recently Abundant Life: New & Selected Poems (Chax Press), As We Vanish from Public View (7 Points Press), and field recordings     of mind     in morning (BlazeVOX, with 15 music-poetry tracks with Holland Hopson on banjo – available on YouTube). In 2025, Lavender Ink published What Were You Thinking: Essays 2006-2024. To order books, learn about talks, readings, and workshops, and see photos of Duncan Farm see Lazer’s website.
This entry was posted in Poetry and tagged , by Posit Editor. Bookmark the permalink.

About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.