
Each Thing Touches
by Marc Frazier,
Glass Lyre Press, PO Box 2693, Glenview, Ill. 60026, Pb, pp. 103, ISBN 978-1-941783-07-8. $16.00
by Marc Frazier,
Glass Lyre Press, PO Box 2693, Glenview, Ill. 60026, Pb, pp. 103, ISBN 978-1-941783-07-8. $16.00
Marc Frazier, a Midwest poet, offers a new collection of 60 poems with topics ranging from collecting stamps to May baskets. A poem can go on for half a book and be an epic with tales of warriors and travels, or be as short as two words, “Jesus wept.” The length of the poems in this collection by Marc Frazier range from one paragraph to three pages.
Poetry is in the eye of the beholder. Frazier poems can offer a quiet description, such as “Premonition” and “…write by night, listen for sounds…” Or be straight forward as “S & H Green Stamps” with “…resentment lives beyond death, lives in place of the dead, returns more often than something others call love.”
Then, there is the style of poetry in which each verse is a separate statement, and could be separate poems. “After” is one such poem, with this as one of the verses. There are several of this style in the collection.
A land of land---feeling usurped by crops.
Nothing lived for beauty,
grief denied as fully
as plants stole nutrients and ate souls.
A land of land---feeling usurped by crops.
Nothing lived for beauty,
grief denied as fully
as plants stole nutrients and ate souls.
Frazier is at his best in “Getting Here” in which he goes from cave man to present day and “Together we are becoming human.” Plus, the title poem, “Each Thing Touches” in which water has special meaning. The book, “Each Thing Touches” offers thought provoking poems on many topics and has a colorful cover.
Marie Asner