{"product_id":"9781450097086","title":"Night \u0026 Day: A collection of poems","description":"Laska has written works alternately described as “bold” and “memorable” and with a “hair-raising comic vitality.”  Given the complexity of his  occasionally dark, unabashedly political, philosophical and underground  writings, he [can be described] as an Appalachian Fyodor Dostoyevsky.    --Jeff Biggers, Contributing Editor to The Bloomsbury Review   Eschewing conventional poetic fashion, Laska’s engaging collection of over three decades of writings in the shadow of corporate domination is a sweeping poetic and prosaic, lyrical and anti-lyrical assemblage of thought-provoking epigrams, puns, and philosophical dialogues, together with voices and vignettes of a by-passed America.  From the stripped-mined hills and hollows of Appalachia to the banal debris of urban streets, his work unfolds, with respectful understatement, the on-going global desecration of inner and outer life.  With patient yet alarmed urgency he brings to the surface an ecological “counter-tradition” whose contours trace back as far as the ancient Chinese Dao De Jing.   -- Csaba Polony, Editor, Left Curve   NIGHT\u0026amp;DAY is an iconoclastic 35 year poetic chronicle of America’s OCD. With a smiling grimace the author journeys to the psychological interior of the Homeland, sees through the nation’s repetition compulsion and self-protective historical amnesia, and returns with Zen-like epigrams, satires, dialogues, and a set of healing philosophical “Maxims of Access.”  BOOK REVIEW: The Past Finds Its Way Home, September 23, 2010  By  Sacramento Book Review \"Sacramento Book Review\" (Sacramento, CA)    This review is from: Night\u0026amp;Day: A collection of poems (Paperback) by P. J. Laska   \"O the fabulous histories\/of fleeting things remain\/each once and ever instant\/ effervescent, like the faces\/you´ll remember years hence\/when the hills are mythic\/fictions of the night sky--\/a moon will rise in memory\/over Morgantown,\/ and you´ll be thinking\/what if what if what if...\" P.J. Laska 's collection of poems is a tour de force in the examination of a disappearing homeland, the government´s gross and compulsive negligence, and the way back to a place of home through philosophical musings. Laska has portrayed a fertile landscape of a working-class citizenship; coal miners, janitors, salesmen across the rich diversities of the Appalachians. But it could be anywhere, anywhere there is history and the undying thirst to regain its story.   \/\/Night\u0026amp;Day\/\/ is a revolutionary documentary shaped by Laska´s skill and free-thinking awareness. He has crafted this collection into three very distinct and thought-provoking sections, each lending a vivid picture created on a palette of carefully blended \"anti-lyrics.\" His style reaches from haiku to epigrammatic dialogue to philosophical conversations to a one-act play. The different forms make for a seamless flow and keeps the reader engaged in an almost voyeuristic indulgence. The images are seen, felt, and experienced, \"Quick-dipping\/their heads, they\/roll silvery drops\/down their backs\/then shimmy\/the dust\/from their wings.\" His eye for the senses is clearly evident, a profound craftsmanship on each page.   The main theme points to loss and the restitution of a culture, a reinstatement of what has vanished, what has been taken, or rather, an intense look back at a sober lingering. The government´s involvement is one of disdain, but what strikes me is the search for meaning through philosophical traditions, the hope for a return to nature, and what is whole from a place of drought. In many ways, these poems are odes and pieces of the subject´s soul. This is a call, an invitation, to query. I accept.","brand":"Xlibris US","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47128587174128,"sku":"9781450097086","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781450097086_p0.jpg?v=1763836962","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781450097086","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}