Reviews
Review by: David Lee, Former poet laureate of Utah and author of So Quietly the Earth - August 1, 2011
A quarter of the way into Abandoned Quarry I thought, “John Lane is the finest Southern landscape poet we have today.” Half way through the manuscript I said out loud to a cardinal in the live oak outside my window, “No poet from the South ever used his world and the influence of that world as well as Johnny Lane. I thought you’d want to know that.” But then late at night after the birds had left and gone home, I finished the collection and for the rest of the darkness my lightning forked no words. I could only feel the effect of the poems permeating my entire being. Today the cardinal is back in the live oak and I’m realizing that I cannot imagine ever again breathing the thought of Southern poetry and not immediately thinking, “Oh. Yeah: John Lane.” He’s just flat that good.
Review by: Ron Rash, Author of Raising the Dead and Eureka Mill - August 1, 2011
Abandoned Quarry takes the reader into the heart of nature as well as into the nature of the heart, and John Lane writes of both with wonder, wisdom, and profound attentiveness. What a magnificent book; what a magnificent poet.
Review by: Kate Daniels, Author of A Walk in Victoria's Secret - August 1, 2011
John Lane has been writing poems that insist we pay close attention to the natural world that gives over more each day to the ravages of humankind. Without rancor, he shows us how to make stories and music out of what remains, and how to thrive in the small epiphanies still to be found chopping wood, climbing rocks, or drinking sweet tea on a shaded front porch.
Review by: Greg Orr, Author of Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved - August 1, 2011
From a long-held ethos of thoughtful, observant engagement with landscape and humanscape, John Lane has created poems that lament what's lost, praise what is, and prophesy what could be. Reading them, we hear a clear voice that does what the best poetry always does-persuades and sustains.