On the Seawall / review of Hank Lazer's PIECES

Ron Slate's November edition of On the Seawall is out. See here: https://www.ronslate.com/

I wrote a review of Hank Lazer's book, PIECES, from BlazeVox Press. I had more fun than I had any right to have! https://www.ronslate.com/on-p-i-e-c-e-s-poems-by-hank-lazer/

Here's one paragraph:

PIECES, then, is about what we leave when we die. Lots of holes, and some pieces. The poet’s uncle is gone, his mother is gone, and he is going (though no verb form seems to work there, since it’s an ongoingness that is, at best, the passing of a baton). “i write poems / that no one / reads / not my family — / you are an exception / & you / have my gratitude[.]” The reader is “you” but only you know who you are; he cannot. Pronoun You, meet It. Readers are a function of hope and belief, like God, and so merit his praise, as did God by his uncle in his bathrobe on the sundeck. Lazer’s most recent book — and he has many! — is an extended meditation on his mother’s death. Earlier in his life, he wrote a long farewell to his father. As poet, he knows that farewells are openings, but that those openings are played by other characters, not the ones who inspired the drama. When the Time Comes was the repository of mother memories; this one is less about memory than about being forgotten, productively, in words.