REVIEWS
“Novalis gave us a well-known articulation of serious, romantic art’s purpose: ‘to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.’ Mark Fitzgerald’s Downburst provides us with one way to do just that. This book loops the cycles of departure and return, affirmation and negation, the paradox of interdependence and isolation, while remaining grounded in the everyday mechanics of suitcases, traffic, aging bodies, poaching eggs, and watching crows. The title’s heart, for me, has to do with the times we are all blindsided by change, shaken by downbursts of weather, of sudden loss, of puzzling grief, of memory rushing into the room of the present. Envying the music and mind of his work, I have been reading Mark Fitzgerald for 20 years, and never have I been so moved as when reading these poems.”
—Andy Fogle (author of New Batteries for Your Halo)
“If as Mark Fitzgerald suggests in this powerful new collection, ‘the human condition is unconditional,’ then what are we to do? Certainly a poet as astute as Fitzgerald acknowledges the tug of ‘surrender’s sage anchor’ and the advice of the river—‘cling to nothing...rain is on its way.’ Still, he argues there is ‘no wrong way back,’ and that there will be times when ‘something / you can’t believe is still / within you starts to speak again.’ And it speaks here with a clarity and assurance that bring light to our days and for which we are truly thankful.” —George Perreault (author of Bodark County)
“Fitzgerald is a poet who digs deep to finds patterns, and then with a clear vision and honed talent, guides readers to open their minds and hearts to the beauty and hardships, the mysteries and truths that reside on, and well below, the surface of life. If you follow him, you’ll be swept away by the collection’s contemplative current to a place where ‘minutes spread like marmalade’ and the whoosh of ‘the pendulum of loss and gain’ is felt in each stark, startling, and stunning image.”
—Dawn Leas (author of Take Something When You Go)
“Mark Fitzgerald’s By Way of Dust and Rain is an elegant debut. The voice here speaks with the virtue of a keen intelligence, with a lyric richness that delights in both its control and spareness. These poems, beautifully calibrated, measure the weight and density of the moments that equal a life.”
—Eric Pankey (author of Augury)
interVIEW
"So much of what we hold onto happens on ordinary days, where we are doing something and we don’t quite expect to see beauty that way or feel so connected with the present moment.” —Mark Fitzgerald
Click here to read the full interview with HeadStuff.