Author Description

The Arcane Mechanics of Constant Lift explores the invisible dynamic by which we and the rest of life tend to persist through the perennial threats, hardships, oppressions, and traumas that would, and eventually do, take us down. The poet's own family's immigrant refugee history is both resource and backdrop for such illuminations. These poems draw as well on childhood memories, observations of nature in its cycles of emergence and breakdown, experiences of love, present-day social struggle, and the all-too-current realities of barbarous invasion and warfare. The collection's title phrase and central image is found in its penultimate poem, "A Prayer," in which we witness a creature's exquisitely embodied knowing of how to navigate the forces of the surround. These poems suggest that the "lift" is indeed in the intimate attunement, a kind of communion, with what surrounds us, immediately and at any distance.