Snapshots of the Perishing World, Poems by Chad Prevost
Chad Prevost’s Snapshots of the Perishing World vividly
renders that world, so that what it declares evanescent seems eternal.
In these sensual, briskly written poems, the world has never seemed more
alive.
“In Snapshots of the Perishing World, Chad Prevost takes us on a pilgrimage, finally offering like a communion wafer, the knowledge that ‘home is what you learn to find. ....Ultimately, Prevost urges us to understand even those who appear to mock redemption, urging us to cast light ‘into the mouths of those who only know how to curse.’ Poems in Snapshots of the Perishing World are important, are necessary because they teach perseverance, the importance of being quiet, of listening to hear the cry of the heart.”—Vivian Shipley, author of Hardboot and When There is No Shore
“Snapshots of the Perishing World, is to use poet Chad Prevost’s own line, ‘a miracle made from the world itself...’ Prevost’s careful attention to the world is complemented by range—in addition to the lyric, his subjects explore the scientific, cosmological, and historical as well as contemporary culture. From Heraclites to chaos theory, Sanskrit to baseball, these are poems of intensity, music, and clarity, yet poems tempered with a reasonable and meaningful doubt and speculation. There is metaphysical yearning but a well a realistic eye cast on our collective failings; the exceptional environmental poem, ‘Tagged & Tamed,’ tells us all too truly, ‘Anything people are capable of, they will do.’ Yet while the drama and vision are anchored in experience, the imagination soars, poem by poem, toward a transforming light, reaching for an understanding of the rush of that experience, for a truce with our transience.”—Christopher Buckley, author of And the Sea and Sky
"The poems in Chad Prevost’s first book meditate on a variety of landscapes—the one glimpsed from the hood of a junked RX-7, the one seen looking south across the Rio Grande from Big Bend, the one experienced looking back through time. ‘From the narrative of the grounded oak/[and] the lyric life of a flock of startled wings,’ these ‘snapshots of the perishing world’ remind us how redemptive poetry can be, and how generous can be our poets.”—Gerry LaFemina, author of The Window Facing Winter
“Mr. Prevost is a young poet with a lot of promise, and one whose career I’ve been following over the years as he’s published some great poems in many lit mags. I am delighted with his first bound publication of many new poems titled Snapshots of the Perishing World. His gift is a storyteller’s keen eye for detail and a grace for language. One can say these poems are personal and self-referential in the way the best of contemporary poetry is, but the collection beats with a stronger heartbeat than most. I’d like to think it is an essential first collection that should be read by everyone.”—Virgil Suarez, author of 90 Miles: Selected Poems
Chad Prevost spent most of his childhood years in Corte Madera, California, and went to high school in Richmond, Virginia. He holds advanced degrees from Baylor University and Georgia State University. He is co-founding editor of the nationally acclaimed Terminus Magazine, http://www.terminusmagazine.com. He is co-editor with Gerry LaFemina of the anthology, Evensong: Contemporary American Poems of Religion and Spirituality, available from Bottom Dog Press. Chad currently lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with his wife and two sons, and teaches at Lee University as Assistant Professor Creative Writing Specialist.
ISBN: 1933456361, 92 pages, $17.00