Marick Press | The Seed Thieves, Robert Fanning

THE SEED THIEVES

Robert Fanning

Paperback - September 2006
72 Pages
ISBN: 0-9779703-0-2
USD $14.95 + Shipping

In dramatic lyrics and narratives, The Seed Thieves investigates both the mundane and the extramundane. In varying styles and voices, the poems cover a wide spectrum of imagery, including: a man startled to prayer by fireflies, a teenage girl falling from a highway overpass, a drunk circling his lawn in a tractor, children scavenging through the treasures of a shattered piñata. Grappling with death, love, God, and existence in a world where “even lifting our hands to pray / we disturb the air,” these poems turn toward death and ruin in search of real light and redemption.

About the Author, Robert Fanning

In addition to American Prophet and The Seed Thieves, Robert Fanning is the author of Old Bright Wheel, winner of the Ledge Press Poetry Chapbook Award. A graduate of the University of Michigan and Sarah Lawrence College, his writing awards include a Creative Artist Grant from ArtServe Michigan, the Inkwell Poetry Award, and the Foley Poetry Award. His work has been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Atlanta Review, and several other journals. He is a professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.

Reviews

"Robert Fanning's music is percussive, meticulous and darkly funny. Like a night watchman, this poet shines a fiercely concentrated light on the weird beauty of the material world—he's like Diogenes, that other cynic who was also on a quest for the truth." - Sherry Fairchock, author of The Palace of Ashes

“Passionate and accomplished — this poet’s ear is beautifully tuned — The Seed Thieves is an urgent, nervous, tender, and brilliant first book. Read it for joy!” - Tomas Lux, author of The Street of Clocks and The Cradle Place

“Turning away from this morning’s headlines to Robert Fannings’ book I feel that someone has steadied my shoulders, and for a while I walk in the holy light of sanity — through charred buildings, yes, in and out of broken-hearted familes and urban traffic, the awful billboards and births and deaths, "the intricate architecture of rubble" that is our lived lives. But the voice guiding me is clear, and the hand on my shoulder sure. It’s a quality we used to call "character", a quality of soul, that keeps me turning the pages. When I look up from the book I see through the window I hadn’t noticed all morning: outside the returning birds are industrious as ever — and singing.” - Marie Howe, author of The Good Thief and What the Living Do

“Robert Fanning’s poems originate from some uncanny place between a fevered imagination and a keen intellect. They are musical, dangerous poems — both sparing and wild. This poet searches for language and meaning in a mysterious world. What the poems offer, instead, is more mystery. More dream. More strange and lovely imagery and music. Robert Fanning is the real thing — a brave traveler in the sensory world, the subconscious, the realms of the dead and the very-much-alive — and he has emerged with these brilliant, startling, compelling poems”. - Laura Kasischke, author of Fire and Flower and Gardening in the Dark.

"These poems resonate with a most exquisite sense of longing and visceral intensity. Through his poetry, we appreciate the significance of memory and loss, while marveling at his uncanny ability to resurrect, in the most immediate sense, those occasions once relegated to obscurity. There is an underlying urgency within Fanning's poems that compels the reader to indeed take note." - Tim Monaghan, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, The Ledge Magazine and Press

The Seed Thieves by Robert Fanning: Homestead Review

The Seed Thieves by Robert Fanning: Metrotimes Review