Small Revolution Author:Jeff Hardin In a world fraught with naysayers and onlookers, with political exaggeration and too-clever sequels, thank goodness we have poets and men ?who define themselves / by what they have / a tenderness toward.? Jeff Hardin?s Small Revolution may indeed start one, this man who loves bird flashings and stillness, who, with every breath, ?leans a little ... more »closer to this earth.? No world, however dewy or overcast, is ever commonplace in his vision and embrace. These poems, reminiscent of those inked by ancient Chinese contemplatives, tap at our windows to say please pay attention. More like postmodern beatitudes for our polarized times, each is a preposterous blessed be Hardin slips in when the forgetful world isn?t looking.
?Linda Parsons Marion, author of This Shaky Earth
In Small Revolution Jeff Hardin is a day-to-day wizard, a shaman of moments. He praises those who converse with dragon flies, willows and people no longer here; those who are off ?studying moss, / finger-nudging an ant, / shrugging at evidence, / believing / otherwise.? Hardin?s poems honor solitude, missing ?what?s most essential: wind and rain against a window; /who [he?s] been; some time alone; /a ripple on a pond gone back to still?? He reminds us that ?there are movies you can?t get anywhere else /except by standing in a field, remembering how, /once, / you were a spirit in moonlight, / mended by wind through sage grass.? And even though Hardin ends ?To Fellow Poets? with ?I guess I?m asking could we be naïve enough / to be naïve again,? he is anything but naïve. He personally understands sorrow and loss in our world and, even so, invites us to stand with him, spirit-filled and ?mended.? These lyrical, witty, sensory-rich poems understand the iffyness of existence and how personal syllables form a silence?a language of hope?in a nebulous world. Readers who approach these poems again and again will discover Hardin?s revolution anything but small.
?Bill Brown, author of The News Inside and Elemental« less