The World Pushes Back: Poems (Paperback)

George Santayana wrote, ‘Spirit chills the flesh and is itself on fire.' If I understand that properly, it could be a way of summing up Garret Keizer's aesthetic in his marvelous The World Pushes Back.  But there are such a variety of attitudes in this book, I'll just cite a few - moments like, ‘to see the garden through/to the stripped harvest,' and ‘all the lies we tell in our right minds,/and the truths we utter raving,' and ‘the only thing that is never ironic/is the need for salvation.' Keizer is my favorite kind of moralist, assertive yet complicit. He takes us on a journey through mystery from travail toward understanding that leads us back to mystery. The world remains the world; it is he who pushes back."" - Stephen Dunn

""The World Pushes Back provides a refreshing surprise in every poem: one reads the deftest of sonnets, say, just before a long free-verse meditation. Of course I'm not talking of technique alone. Ignoring the trendy, Garret Keizer unflaggingly (and only) offers things that matter: love, both eros and agape; anger at social injustice–without facile judgment and with earnestness and wit. A long time coming, this is a breathtaking poetic debut."" - Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011–2015)