Seasons in the Ravine, 2017, By PJ Laska

Seasons in the Ravine adds to the assembly of classical Chinese and Japanese imagery adopted, adapted, and elaborated by contemporary American poets, like Gary Snyder and–some would argue by Appalachian poets especially compellingly. A master of the poetic conventions assoicated with this body of work, Laska uses and refuses the conventions with ease. His pastoral log cabin is set in the middle of town, and he writes from a ravine, rather than the romantic heights of a mountain. His landscape is up-close, filled with leaves, trees, wind, sun, and rain, along with the clutter of trash tossed over the hillside. Punctuating his own passages with ‘wall poems’ by Basho and others, Laska critiques and, in a sense, overcomes the dualism of ugliness and beauty, encouraging us to love them fully, enjoying and protesting, no matter how heavy the odds.”

                                                                                           –Edwina Pendarvis

 

Morning in America: A Poetic Assemblage from the Long Decade, by PJ Laska 2016

MORNING IN AMERICA is challenging poetic work asking readers to entertain the startling possibility that the past is not, as Aristotle said, “that which has been,” but is instead that which has been lifted from the crypt to serve the purposes of the future-blind. That the past lives on in memory and inertial repetition is not news. That it has been reanimated with the help of financial steroids to enable the fossilized to lord it over the living is a 21st Century reality for this eco-conscious political poet whose anti-lyric and dialogue assemblages seek to re-dimension the range of resistance and return poetry to its avant-garde critical function.

PJ LASKA: on Twitter @Awolanalyst
BLOG: pjlaska.blogspot.blog
WORDPRESS: awolanalyst.co