Synopses & Reviews
In this debut collection, Dave Lucas turns and returns to Cleveland, where he was raised. The weather of these poems arises from both the lush light of the natural world and the hard rain of industry. Poem by poem, the book surveys the majesty and ruin of landscape and lakefront, paying tribute to the shifting seasons of a city, of a terrain, and of those who dwell there.
Review
"This book springs fully formed, conceived under the water sign of Lake Erie, the fire sign of comets and fireflies, the steel sign of midwestern cities and suburbs. In Weather, Dave Lucas gives us the living, breathing world. This is a memorable, accomplished debut."—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Unmentionables
Review
"Horatian in its great good humor and its sympathies, romantic in its love of place, and postmodern in its vision of human value in an indifferent universe, Weather is a masterful debut collection. Dave Lucas recognizes, as few poets do, no matter what their age, that praise and lament are different facets of attachment and that mourning often is the deepest form of celebration."—Alan Shapiro, author of The Dead Alive and Busy
Review
“This could only be written by a hometown boy who believes equally in the powers of his town and of his culture to bring about transformation . . . A lovely, promising and powerful first book, even more so for readers who know its landscape.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"Lucas' eloquent metaphors and strong imagery create a sense of romanticism, passion and mystery about the place we call home and show how deeply it has rooted itself in him."--Cleveland Magazine
Review
“A counterpoint of natural awe and poignant reminiscence presented in Lucas’s lyrical language keeps the collection’s climate from becoming inhospitable. . . .The poems of Weather have been polished, and I expect they will shine for quite a long time.”—Karen Pickell, Flycatcher
About the Author
"This book springs fully formed, conceived under the water sign of Lake Erie, the fire sign of comets and fireflies, the steel sign of midwestern cities and suburbs. In Weather, Dave Lucas gives us the living, breathing world. This is a memorable, accomplished debut."—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Unmentionables
"Horatian in its great good humor and its sympathies, romantic in its love of place, and postmodern in its vision of human value in an indifferent universe, Weather is a masterful debut collection. Dave Lucas recognizes, as few poets do, no matter what their age, that praise and lament are different facets of attachment and that mourning often is the deepest form of celebration."—Alan Shapiro, author of The Dead Alive and Busy
“This could only be written by a hometown boy who believes equally in the powers of his town and of his culture to bring about transformation . . . A lovely, promising and powerful first book, even more so for readers who know its landscape.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Lucas' eloquent metaphors and strong imagery create a sense of romanticism, passion and mystery about the place we call home and show how deeply it has rooted itself in him."--Cleveland Magazine
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Midst of a Burning Fiery Furnace
Beach Pea
Steelhead
Red-tailed Hawk
Firefly
Lake Erie Monster
To the Lake
December 1678, New France
At the Cuyahoga Flats
River on Fire
Hulett Ore Unloaders
Midwestern Cities
"They Wonder at the Star"
The Rain Again
Wires
The Children
Sophomores
For Madeleine, in Another June
Suburban Pastoral
After Love
To Alyce, on Her Engagement
Epithalamium
It Will Be Rain Tonight
You Asked What the Heart Can Carry
To Say Nothing
On a Portrait by Lucian Freud
A Sudden Gust of Wind
Lives of the Saints
Orpheus, Aside
The Fox
The Barber
In Appalachia
Letter to a Friend
Dream after News of the Poet's Death
We Who Keep the Mystery
The Dog, in the Presence of Wolves
Equinox and After
November
All Souls Night
Lines for Winter
Lunar Calendar
Every Veyne in Swich Licour
The Aged
Self-Portrait
To a Shade
In Elegy
What the Talkers Were Talking
Of the Tragedies
After Strange Gods
Aubade
Perchè non parli?
The Twenty-first Century
The New Poetry
Lexicon
Notes