Wu Wei

Tom Crawford's words paint familiar landscapes—Seattle's coastline, New York's public spaces, rural China, and Western mobile homes—in a new light. In poems as humorous as they are revelatory, sea birds careen off cliff walls "Then back/to the water to consider/where they went wrong," nudes are spontaneously drawn in urban coffee shops, and the Bhagavad Gita sits on a shelf in a trailer home, holding up deodorant. Crawford’s Eastern spirituality, tempered by working-class pragmatism, transforms these narrative poems into memorable portraits of the everyday.