Address: Fort Lauderdale, FL
If It Comes To That
With his fourth full-length collection, Marc Frazier has provided us with “a design for living.” In a world that is quick to destabilize subjective experience, Frazier creates a second world of dramatized human experience by weaving personal history with artistic ancestry. Part meditation and part ekphrastic, Frazier has collaged a mixtape of wonder and wonderment. If “the loneliness inside you is deeper than the sea,” then this book is a salve. Through conversation with other poets, painters, film makers, and musicians, Frazier proves that poetry and art are explorations of lineage and their enduring influence echoes up from the past into the present to direct and console us.
— John McCarthy, Author of Scared Violent Like Horses
If It Comes To That is a collection that thoughtfully considers the human condition. The poet shares deep reflections on the creative spirit, on the archetypes that encapsulate our behaviors, and on our relationship with the natural world. One can’t help but see the connections that emerge while reading these poems—there are big questions of how we’re connected to the people who inspire us and the ways in which we’re tied to the past. However, these poems are also filled with the people who we touch simply and softly, hand to hand, finding a way through uncertain times.
— Aaron Lelito, Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Wild Roof Journal
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Two Sample poems
All Evening the Luna Moths
—after a line by Mary Kay Rummel
ponder the inevitable—their short stay in the physical realm
each spring and early summer their large, translucent wings
seeing through—an auspice
their white bodies barely here
the moon moth few ever see
crescent in the eyespot of its wings
pinkish long legs, ghosts of a ballerina dancing
what will we say if we spot one by chance?
how can we not think of any life’s purpose
what ties us to the physical world?
the luna moth lives for about a week
its leaving imminent
when adult, it no longer feeds as if the body is already spirit
the earth a sanctum where she lays her eggs
and dies, or does she?
eggs hatch into caterpillars
which body holds me to earth and for how long
the one you can barely see,
the one I insist on?
all evening the moths persist
an irony—eyespots and long tails on their hind legs
confuse predators as if their survival
is as important as ours
Here goes your text ... Select any part of your text to access the formatting toolbar.Incident on the Green Line
—I am trying to quit thinking of simple human decency as a form of heroism, both in my poems and in the world. Gabrielle Calvocoressi
most sit on the el car
minding their own business
avoiding direct eye contact
strangers making love
to their phones or reading/
someone passes through
seeking change for food,
which many of us doubt,
but a few, the least among us,
comply, though most shake
their heads and look down
at anything/
there is the one talking loudly
to himself to invisible others
and we listen and are thankful/
a man just up and punches
an elderly woman in the face
and someone pushes the button for help
while others comfort her
a middle-aged woman lets the old woman
rest her head against her warm bosom
while others stare blankly or
shake their heads in commiseration
as two men stand in front of her
to block further attack
and I think how fast
ugliness appears and how fast
our better selves sing
yes, they sing