The Pure Land by Ed Krizek

These are poems of action. Their locale is the human heart. Their atmosphere is the contemplative mind. They work like a force of gravity, drawing the reader to an interior continent—a pure land where the poet feels and learns as he contemplates life in its richness, complexity, sorrow and transcendence.  In this small book, there are many points of contact for the reader: nature’s profusion of forms, love for the departed, despair, transcendence, the passion of families, Lucifer holding a red carnation, chicken livers, rabbits, birds of prey, inescapable oscillations of bright and dark, and a meal of lamb chops for a dying friend. Death is here in many guises, but so is rebirth, as both paradox and irony arise in their meeting. In the end, one gets the sense that it cost the poet a great deal to write these poems. There are great rewards in reading them.

–William Van Buskirk, “This Wild Joy that Thrills Outside the Law.” It won the Joie de Vivre prize.

The poems in Ed Krizek’s The Pure Land address the reader directly about misery, joy and the mundane; about mortality and family and most of all, the nature of memory. His unpretentious language is accessible but the poems reward multiple readings. Poet and narrator may not be one and the same, but they are well acquainted and cooperate to produce lines that astonish, disturb and comfort.

–David Kozinski, Tripping Over Memorial Day and chapbook Loopholes. Recipient of the 2018 Fellowship for Poetry, Established Professional category, from the Delaware Division of the Arts.