In his new collection, Gregory Fraser crafts extraordinary poems out of ordinary subjects such as relationships and childhood. Moving from narrative to monologue to lyric, he fills each poem with wise and tricky allusions and a rich range of expression. In "Autobiography at Seventeen," for example, his lines dance around idioms to make them fresh rather than familiar. "Cheat" explores the complicated interplay of hate and guilt, as unintended revenge comes down in a most catastrophic way. The comic and biting "Poetry Is Stupid" lets readers in on a formative moment of decision for the poet. Most touching is the long work dedicated to Fraser’s brother, "Hephaestus Calls My Brother Home," an elegy that shifts from tenderness to violence with startling ease and clarity.

Answering the Ruins: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Fraser, Gregory

Poetry

TriQuarterly

Gregory Fraser is an associate professor of English at the University of West Georgia. His first book of poetry, Strange Pietà (2003), won the Walt Mcdonald Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award. A recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fraser is the coauthor, with Chad Davidson, of the textbook Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches. He lives in Carrollton, Georgia.

It is our everyday explorations--the small explosions within life, family, and "ordinary" survival--that make up Gregory Fraser's fourth collection of poetry, Little Armageddon. Fraser writes at eye level, detailing the experiences of fatherhood, love, and the quiet of daily life, poised at the brink of abrupt upheaval. These poems are an exercise in precision and reflection. Free verse and&nbsp;prose show readers the life within the landscape. In "My Daughter and the Lizard," the speaker reflects on grace, meditating on the reptile his child is inspecting: "I scissor-jab three holes through the lid / of a Mason jar and tell her to be gentle, / 'It's a living thing,' I say, 'not a toy.'" We are how we live. These poems balance imagination and truth telling with rich verse that brings the reader's ear closer to the quiet--and how intense it truly is.

Little Armageddon: Poems

Designed for Flight both continues and enlarges the exploration of the rhythms of our emotional lives undertaken in Gregory Fraser’s first two collections. A master of metaphor, Fraser works magic within tightly controlled forms, loading lines with surprising juxtapositions and changes of direction. Taken together, the poems trace the sometimes instant, sometimes decades-long movement from incomprehensible loss and grief to rueful reflection and, if we’re lucky, uneasy accommodation. Casting a sharply observant eye on past selves, always steering clear of simple sentiment, the speaker in this collection looks back with bitter irony and forgiveness in equal measure. Against the fears and frustrations of childhood, the dissolution of a doomed relationship, and the distance between the hoped for and the actual, Fraser’s poems offer the imagination’s capacity for endless invention and the compensatory pleasures of art.

Designed for Flight: Poems

The twelfth volume of poems in the Walt McDonald First-Book Series, Gregory Fraser's Strange Pietà is a compelling exploration of illness and family life, memory and desire, friendship and loss. A major focus of the collection is the poet's relationship to his brother Jonathan, who was born with spina bifida, a disease that rendered him both physically and mentally disabled. In rich and often wrenching detail, Fraser describes the emotional turmoil, familiar dysfunction, and complex social responses arising from the birth of a handicapped child.The book examines cultural standards of normalcy, and uncovers those aspects of the self and others that are often considered freakish, unnatural, or "monstrous." What emerges is a poetry of poignancy and intellectual rigor, of private discoveries and larger philosophical questions about faith, beauty, and the redemptive power of art.The various other poems in the volume frequently take up disturbing subjects from domestic abuse to violent global conflict, from the death of a parent to the breakup of a close friend's marriage. By turns urgent, tender, skeptical, and wry, Fraser's work displays a complexity of thought with a clarity of language and imagery.A two-time finalist for the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, Strange Pietà is, according to Robert Phillips, "an important debut." Phillips also writes, "This book, from beginning to end, shows the hand of one who has mastered his craft and lived long enough to have something to say." James Olney of The Southern Review describes Strange Pietà as "a resounding triumph of strictly ordered emotion."

Strange Pietà (Walt McDonald First-Book Series)

Texas Tech University Press

The twelfth volume of poems in the Walt McDonald First-Book Series, Gregory Fraser's Strange Pietà is a compelling exploration of illness and family life, memory and desire, friendship and loss. A major focus of the collection is the poet's relationship to his brother Jonathan, who was born with spina bifida, a disease that rendered him both physically and mentally disabled. In rich and often wrenching detail, Fraser describes the emotional turmoil, familiar dysfunction, and complex social responses arising from the birth of a handicapped child.The book examines cultural standards of normalcy, and uncovers those aspects of the self and others that are often considered freakish, unnatural, or "monstrous." What emerges is a poetry of poignancy and intellectual rigor, of private discoveries and larger philosophical questions about faith, beauty, and the redemptive power of art.The various other poems in the volume frequently take up disturbing subjects from domestic abuse to violent global conflict, from the death of a parent to the breakup of a close friend's marriage. By turns urgent, tender, skeptical, and wry, Fraser's work displays a complexity of thought with a clarity of language and imagery.A two-time finalist for the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, Strange Pietà is, according to Robert Phillips, "an important debut." Phillips also writes, "This book, from beginning to end, shows the hand of one who has mastered his craft and lived long enough to have something to say." James Olney of The Southern Review describes Strange Pietà as "a resounding triumph of strictly ordered emotion."

How well can you decode the signs that permeate our daily lives? All of us, consciously or not, constantly engage in the acts of reading and interpreting the signs in the world around us. But how do we sharpen these skills, deepen our awareness of meaning in a complex world, and ultimately reach our full potential as university writers? This book answers the needs of students of composition, culture studies, and literature, providing a process-orientated guide to analyzing anything.

Analyze Anything: A Guide to Critical Reading and Writing

Reference

Davidson, Chad

Words, Language & Grammar

Continuum

Dictionaries & Thesauruses

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fraser, Gregory. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Fraser, Gregory

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fraser, Gregory. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Answering the Ruins: Poems

Answering the Ruins: Poems

Little Armageddon: Poems

Designed for Flight: Poems

Strange Pietà (Walt McDonald First-Book Series)

Strange Pietà (Walt McDonald First-Book Series)

Analyze Anything: A Guide to Critical Reading and Writing

Analyze Anything: A Guide to Critical Reading and Writing