Bloom and Laceration: Poems

At a time when the human ravages on the planet seem to be reaching a crescendo, the poems in Bloom and Laceration offer lamentations to a fragmented world and celebrations of beauty’s fierce persistence. Here are lyric poems on the vicissitudes of family played out against wild (and domesticated) nature. Here are long meditations on passing through, on glimpsing, on transience and transcendence. From Southern California to Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, to the south of France, and especially to the hills and woods of Upstate New York, Black’s poems are full of wonder and ferocity, exuberance and sorrow.

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Ralph Black was raised in Maryland and educated at the University of Oregon and New York University. His first collection of poems, Turning Over the Earth, was published by Milkweed Editions. He is also the author of a chapbook, The Apple Psalms.  Black is the recipient of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize from The Massachusetts Review and the Chelsea Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Georgia and Gettysburg Reviews, Orion, and West Branch. He lives in Rochester, NY, and teaches at SUNY, College at Brockport.