By Way of Dust and Rain

Subtle, lyrical and accomplished Mark Fitzgerald 's poetry moves easily between image and insight, the formal and the concrete; always with a keen ability to render the vicissitudes and mysteries of trying to see and be alive. These poems stay with you long after you've read them, paint bold horizons of meaning and contemplate humanity's relationship to the natural world and the indomitable strides of time. A blue jay or flower is given the same magnitude as a train or saxophone. The dead are brought to life and begin to sing. A mask is unveiled and a carnival envisioned. Neither obscure nor colloquial, the poet has woven a tapestry of remarkable intimacy and wonder, celebrating the sublime half-light that waltzes between ecstasy and elegy, between dust and the rain that washes it away.