Drowning Man Is Never Tall Enough

PATRICK LAWLER is the director of the Writing Program at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He is also the author of the poetry collections Feeding the Fear of the Earth and Reading a Burning Book.

Brilliance in poetry isn't always to be coveted; sometimes a poet is so blinded by the gorgeous phrase that meaning seems irrelevant—a feeling the reader rarely shares. In the case of Patrick Lawler, however, verbal brilliance is put in the service of deep philosophic probing: the question is 'how to distinguish / evil from benign absurdity' in a world where the 'dark dream names' of wars are brought to us nightly in 'talking light.' The poet, struck with the loss of moral certainty, finds even language slips away from what it tries to pin down. . . . This fine first book should appeal to readers who share Lawler's concern for the moral and the real.