From Publishers Weekly
The refreshing humility of this prize-winning debut collection derives from the fact that the poems, which are well-crafted and full of small pleasures, often look outward first. They consider the details of the world and its stories—a small-town traveling fair, a doll house, Cain and Abel, a robin, a circumcision or Pandora's box—and encourage a reader to put together the larger meanings. This is not to say that Fried's unassuming approach does not astonish: in a poem that begins with simple description ("In the lot by the volunteer fire house"), Fried manages a leap to a grander claim: "These are moments of slack, of wander,/ of full reversion to the old calm." He is able to find "the jag and shimmer" of the most ordinary-seeming places and things. The moon was "once flawless and ample/ as a cufflink"; a kicking fetus "is building something/ in there" with "little saw strokes/ and two-handed hammer taps." He even finds a new angle on Orpheus and Eurydice. Some poems are very quiet, but they find their solidity with insistent rhythms and subtle rhymes, with intelligent syntax, with "their soft mouths poised/ to part with their first consonantal sounds."
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About the Author
Gabriel Fried grew up in upstate New York. His poems have appeared in a number of journals, including The American Scholar, Drunken Boat, The Gettysburg Review, The Great River Review, and The Paris Review. He lives in New York City, where he edits the poetry series at Persea Books.
