Questions/Places/Voices/Seasons - Softcover

Poetry. QUESTIONS/PLACES/VOICES/SEASONS continues and expands the innovative meditational poetry Norman Fischer has explored in earlier books, such as SLOWLY BUT DEARLY, SUCCESS, and I WAS BLOWN BACK. The two long serial poems that anchor QUESTIONS/PLACES/VOICES/SEASONS, "Charlotte's Way" and "Seasons," will feel quite familiar to Fischer's many readers. But he also inaugurates a new form of writing in this new book in which he inhabits the voices of others, such as Alberto Caeiro, Reb Yosl of Kemenetz, Elena Rivera, and Saigyo Hoshi. The combination of these distinct forms of writing create a compelling new addition to Fischer's already impressive body of work.

Norman Fischer is a Zen Buddhist priest. A former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, he is the founder and teacher for the Everyday Zen Foundation, a network of communities and projects. Fischer began publishing poetry in the late 1970's as part of a Bay Area group of experimental writers. His books include Turn Left In Order To Go Right (O Books, 1989), Precisely The Point Being Made (O Books/Chax Press 1993), Jerusalem Moonlight (Clear Glass Publications, 1995), The Narrow Roads of Japan (Ex Nihilo Press 1998), Success (Singing Horse Press, 2000), Slowly but Dearly (Chax Press, 2004), I Was Blown Back (Singing Horse Press 2005) Charlotte's Way (TinFish 2008). His latest prose work is Sailing Home: Using the Wisdom of Homer's Odyssey to Navigate Life's Perils and Pitfalls (Simon and Schuster, 2008).