About the Book
Building upon the long-line, lyric narrative style of Deborah Fries's first volume of poetry, this collection addresses familiar themes of place, love, mortality, and modern life. Place plays a major role in this collection: from the ennui of a Massachusetts suburb and the transience of a town in shale country to the fresh joy found on a Minnesota hiking trail, Fries nurtures a sensibility shaped by surroundings. Love, however, is most often out of place or ill-timed in book, where dolphins shape-shift their way into women's beds, bucks drive does into oncoming traffic and men are as habituated as elephants. Love and loved ones are both constant and ephemeral in these poems, as the body becomes less reliable, friends are lost and yet, as in the field of everything, they remain with us. The poems in The Bright Field of Everything strive to understand a world that is made thinner by technology, richer through memory and attentiveness, and visual through words chosen like paints.
About the Author :
Deborah Fries is a former poet laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review , North American Review , Terrain , Cream City Review , and the anthology Powder . She is the author of Various Modes of Departure and is a recipient of a grant from the Leeway Foundation. She lives in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, USA.
Review :
"Deborah Fries s "The Bright Field of Everything" harness[es] inhuman powers of observation, as if they were closer kin to hawks, dogs, and heavenly angels in the ability to see, hear, and intuit their surroundings and complements her observation skills with master-level wordsmithing. Never wearying or caught up in the games poets play, Fries s work satiates like a short story, albeit in twenty or thirty lines." Matt Sutherland, forewordreviews.com"
Despite statements to the contrary, we want poetry to change the world, to change us. Here, in "The Bright Field of Everything," we sense the world shift from how it is apprehended to how it is. In the process, knowledge becomes wisdom. . . . "The Bright Field of Everything" is tribute, reaffirmation, grace, hope. These are poems of the first order. Leonard Gontarek, author, "Zen for Beginners ""
Overflows with almost unbearably vivid poems that open us up anew to the world we live in. . . . The field of everything is here, very bright, with bite and savor. John Timpane, "Philadelphia Inquirer""
Through rich and beguiling lyrics she deciphers body, place, science, and the narrative that holds us all together. . . . In this wonderful collection you ll look up after each poem, too, as you wade into the words and let them hold you, then settle back in for your return. Simmons B. Buntin, editor-in-chief, "Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments," and author, "Bloom" and "Riverfall ""
"Deborah Fries's "The Bright Field of Everything" harness[es] inhuman powers of observation, as if they were closer kin to hawks, dogs, and heavenly angels in the ability to see, hear, and intuit their surroundings and complements her observation skills with master-level wordsmithing. Never wearying or caught up in the games poets play, Fries's work satiates like a short story, albeit in twenty or thirty lines." --Matt Sutherland, forewordreviews.com
"Despite statements to the contrary, we want poetry to change the world, to change us. Here, in "The Bright Field of Everything," we sense the world shift from how it is apprehended to how it is. In the process, knowledge becomes wisdom. . . . "The Bright Field of Everything" is tribute, reaffirmation, grace, hope. These are poems of the first order." --Leonard Gontarek, author, "Zen for Beginners "
"Through rich and beguiling lyrics she deciphers body, place, science, and the narrative that holds us all together. . . . In this wonderful collection you'll look up after each poem, too, as you wade into the words and let them hold you, then settle back in for your return." --Simmons B. Buntin, editor-in-chief, "Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments," and author, "Bloom" and "Riverfall "
"Overflows with almost unbearably vivid poems that open us up anew to the world we live in. . . . The field of everything is here, very bright, with bite and savor." --John Timpane, "Philadelphia Inquirer"
