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Of The Saint of Withdrawal, poet Thomas
Lux writes:
"Eric Schwerer is a young
poet with a great ear (oh so rare!), an intense "thought-felt"
intelligence, and the ability to make his poems' mysteries lucid (oh rarer
still!). The Saint of Withdrawal is
a stunning debut."
Poet
Molly Peacock writes:
“The adventure of reading a
poem by Eric Schwerer is like descending through a series of caves, where
hints deepen into suggestions, and suggestions slide into moods, and moods
merge with intuitions, all leading to an interconnected underground of
understanding. In The Saint of
Withdrawal Schwerer explores the interiors of boyhood: its voices,
vices and bewilderments. He even devises a special language through
which this boyhood speaks. Daring to follow the allure of the shadows of
experience, the poems in The Saint of Withdrawa/
shine with passionate complexity.
Poet
Mark Halliday writes:
“In "Seaside Boy" the
voice of nostalgic yearning asks "Dear Mister Misty, how much for it, /
how much for all that is misty?" Eric Schwerer's poetry is fueled
by a sense that something invaluable and numinous waits to be discovered
somewhere in the misted swampy layers of memory, back there in the smoldering
depths of boyhood and adolescence; at the same time, there's a sense
that discovery and revelation might prove awfully expensive for the
psyche. The poems enact a dance between search and evasion, wanting to
catch a quintessence that seems to try to avoid being trapped in
language. The whorl is muddy but it churns green with close
reflection.”
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