Author Description

In his earlier collections of poetry, Erik La Prade wrote sensitively and lyrically of his personal reactions to modern urban life. In his new book, La Prade explores a different environment: small, history-laden communities in upstate New York. In these poems, he contemplates the changing of the seasons, landscapes, and wildlife, as he hikes trails through lands once farmed by past generations, and now being reclaimed by Nature. These farmlands with their decomposing barns and natural surroundings represent a mythic history of "America." Search for Survivors is an elegiac portrait of a land and a nation where rapidly changing social and cultural priorities are erasing our collective memories of the past. La Prade's poems remind us that the threads of history run everywhere through our lives, and we ignore them to our detriment. "Nothing is forced or pushed. The words just flow along comfortably. The descriptions are precise and vivid. There is insight and vulnerability in these lyrical words. We see our 'self' in the image of nature. We are listening to nature's continuous song and are tempted to join the chorus in recognition that it's our song, too." -Les Levine Artist "Erik La Prade is creating an urban-inflected nature poetry for the climate-change era." -Martin Janal PhD, Earth Sciences, Cambridge University