I Thought I Was New Here

Poetry. "Gregory Lawless is a visionary of fallen satellites, making revelations of scrap and stray: exiles, astronauts, scarecrows, a gnome, a daughter who will not speak, a pet gryphon and pet rock that 'gets dizzy on the plains.' Formally varying from tight whirlpooling musics to looser prose constructions, the strange incantations of these splendid poems, 'in my last life I came back as a mountain,' convey a yearning for the possibility of the mythic in the everyday countered by a wry humor and intelligence that has its doubts. Maybe the sleet in depressed steel towns that falls in 'I Thought I Was New Here' should be proof and consolation enough. And of these visions that provide such a plentitude of amazement--I think this poet agrees with Rimbaud--at least we've had them'--Dean Young.