Longlisted for the 2008 ReLit Award for PoetryEarth's Crude Gravities is both a meditation and an argument, a compelling series of poems on the world of matter and the world of spirit. Acclaimed poet Patrick Friesen muses on the religion that has been such a key part of his own background--but he also raises uncertainties.
Whether he is discussing his love of the material world or the fictional creation of a narrative in religion, Friesen's poetry is elegant, eloquent and imagistic.
A new work by one of Canada's acclaimed poets.
"Patrick Friesen's new poems possess a luminous gravity, offering us an urgent series of remembrances, meditations and perceptions that have at their heart all that we know about our certain, common fate, and all that we cannot know about the mortality that defines us. Friesen translates his 'thirst for the sorcery of the world' and the spiritual hunger of a secular ascetic into poetry that intersects rural and urban, prairie dust and Vancouver rain, the goddamned and 'god blessed' . . . these poems address the reader with rare simplicity and openness, creating a profound sense of common ground between writer and reader: our being 'at home in need.'"
--Janice Kulyk Keefer
