The Silver Bowl Is Filled with Snow

I am haunted by these seemingly slight poems. Hank Lazer's new book sounds a valedictory note but one absent of any melancholy. Instead, it radiates the calmness of ""otherside"" moments - fugitive, barely glimpsed, rich with the ephemeral. Deeply informed by his practice in Zen Buddhism, these poems attest to a state of being-here that, like a silver bowl filled with snow, holds fullness close; emptiness even closer. They gleam with an uncanny and sustaining clarity. -Patrick PritchettLike Wang Wei, Saigyo, and Su Dongpo before him, Hank Lazer's recent work - most saliently here in The Silver Bowl Is Filled With Snow - reflects the Zen spirit of quiet, sane, and compassionate reflection. A pleasure to read these poems in an insane world. -Norman FischerI finished The Silver Bowl in the early morning earlier this week, which felt like the perfect time to be reading and immersing in it. I found it remarkable that it touches on so many tragedies but it feels so energized, with a pulse on life, on a dharma that is personal but wide and open. -Pearl KanMany of the poems in The Silver Bowl are set in rural Alabama, at Hank Lazer's beloved Duncan Farm, in a landscape of rocks, meadows, cows, gum trees, and stars overhead. His generous voice encourages me/the reader to remember that we are all in this together. ""We are equal before the light."" -Susan MoonThe Silver Bowl Is Filled with Snow is a lyrical meditation on the beauty found, if we look carefully, in living through each day. These poems are prayers, transforming, through the force of their particularized and often idiosyncratic language, the mundane into the extraordinary. Lazer continues to be a master of surprise, crafting lines as little linguistic gifts, and reminding us at every turn, ""there is more/we will never/know/even as we/can see it."" -Jacqueline Allen Trimble- Poet Laureate of Alabama.