Charlatan: Poems

With a precise eye for form and a clear love for the tone and timbre of language, Steven Laird creates a profound and surreal sense of place and time, upending it all with brilliant irony. Throughout, Laird teases magic from the landscape (where clouds are "handwritten in loose cursive" and hills can be "read in translation") in poetry with a strong, exuberant voice. This charlatan is no ordinary snake-oil salesman. He knows you need to name a thing before you can even see it, and his warning is clear - never confuse your desires with the real thing. Like the charlatan, Steven Laird has more than a few tricks up his sleeve, seeking to heal the invisible wounds of soul and mind, binding our longing for a great spiritual knowing to the experience of our daily lives. Whether in raucous celebration or private communion, his poems work towards the creation of a world from the thin air of words." - Mark Callanan, poet