Looking forward to having Garret Keizer here at the Cobleigh Public Library with Green Mountain Books and Prints to talk about his new poetry book, The World Pushes Back! Please join us!

The World Pushes Back by Garret Keizer won the 2018 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in March 2019. Keizer is the author of eight books. His latest book, The World Pushes Back, is his first book of poetry. The cover photograph is by Jake Mosher, a Montana-based photographer who grew up in Irasburg.

Stephen Dunn writes the following about The World Pushes Back:
George Santayana wrote, "Spirit chills the flesh and is itself on fire." If I understand that properly, it could be a way of summing up Garret Keizer's aesthetic in his marvelous The World Pushes Back. But there are such a variety of attitudes in this book, I'll just cite a few–moments like, "to see the garden though/to the stripped harvest," and "the lies we tell in our right minds/and the truths we utter raving," and "The only thing/that is never ironic/ is the need for salvation." Keizer is my favorite kind of moralist, assertive yet complicit. He takes us on a journey through mystery from travail toward understanding that leads us back to mystery. The world remains the world; it is he who pushes back.

Keizer and his wife, Kathy Keizer, live in Sutton. To contact him or learn more about his work, see his website: http://garretkeizer.com.