This selected--the first compilation of essays by Hank Lazer following his ground-breaking and much revered two-volume Opposing Poetries--offers twelve years of incisive writing at the intersection of two of the more contentiously debated topics in current letters. Drawing on poetic traditions as seemingly disparate as Language writing and Buddhist poetry, Lazer pursues a way of reading that is rich in the music and spirit of the word, attuning readers to the pleasures and range of possibilities for innovative poetry. In a very accessible writing style, and with flashes of brilliance, Lazer...

Poet Hank Lazer captures delicious moments with the literal strokes of his pen. Lazer has published twenty-two books of poetry. Brush Mind adds another dimension to Lazer's handwritten shape-writing Notebook project (see N24 and N18) with a casualness, freshness, rapidity, humor, and depth in a unique kind of flash poetry book; this book can be read cover to cover in seven minutes. Brush Mind began with a special brush pen given to the poet by Buddhist priest/poet Norman Fischer, and owes a debt to the calligraphy work of the great Kazuaki Tanahashi.