Feel Free

Starred review from July 15, 2019
In Laird’s precise, energetic fourth collection (after Go Giants), his chief poetic gift—an intimate voice of mixed vernaculars that gets inside the reader’s head—is on full display. Whether bedside with his children, walking “a scrubby acre at Creggandevesky,” watching a sea bass that eyes him from a plate, or navigating traffic en route to his dying mother in hospice, Laird’s line has musical integrity and strength. Infusing the intensity of childhood with the sorrow of losing a parent, Laird explores this timeless subject in “The Folding,” in which he folds paper snowflakes with his children. Here, childhood and parenthood are presented as the same thing, reversed. Before the poem concludes with a gorgeously described snowy day, it observes “that infinite complexity’s composed/ by simple rules.” Similarly, another standout poem in the collection, “The Vehicle and the Tenor,” rises to the manic threshold of grief, the devastating reality of his mother’s dying, “beyond metaphor.” Laird offers the reader a subtle, lasting meditation exploring the family as it was, as it is, or as it could be.

Starred review from August 1, 2019

Acclaimed poet Laird (To a Fault) writes poems in which language acts as an exercise of seeing and probing, yearning to shape reality and ideas. The poet extracts his themes by cutting across history and reality. Race, refugees, immigrants, politics, national identity, family, love, and life in the city are all tangled up through richly textured poems. There is no stylistic uniformity in this collection as the poet employs a variety of forms to engage his subjects. In one haunting piece, he lyrically depicts in a lyrical mode a relationship between a father and a son in an everyday descriptive scene but permeated with dread and piercing grief; the cumulative effect is dazzling: "we are going home, waiting/ at the turn of the traffic, when I find/ I have to stop my hand from taking his." Laird claims the common as the fertile land of poetry spotting gleams in its many layers. He is questioning and investigating the human experience, tirelessly reaching for its pulsed substance. One can see the brilliant usage of the matter-of-fact glints and clichés, which, in most cases, is reminiscent of work by John Ashbery. VERDICT Laird writes remarkable poems, self-reflective and socially drenched. Those here are rich instances of awakening and discovery. Highly recommended.--Sadiq Alkoriji, Broward Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

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