As We Vanish From Public View

As We Vanish from Public View 

By Hank Lazer 

7 Points Press, 2024 

Paper: $18 

Genre: Poetry 

Reviewed by Ken Autrey 

Hank Lazer, one of the most prolific Alabama writers, has published 35 volumes of poetry and several essay collections. His most recent book, As We Vanish from Public View, contains sixty untitled poems, each dated diary-like and sometimes appended by the location in which it was written. This documentation of time and place seems particularly apt for a collection such as this, in which the spare poems, usually with short lines surrounded by ample space, call us to savor them meditatively, ourselves temporarily “vanishing from public view” as we do so.  

These elemental poems often take us into the natural world and challenge us to ponder connections among apparently dissimilar images: dying, the desert, a Buddha statue, a pine tree, and the act of breathing. They urge us to empty ourselves in favor of our surroundings. Here is one poem, quoted in full: 

oh 

            so this 

is what I see 

            self dissolving 

by means of 

            aging or 

practiced attention 

            woven into 

fabric of tree 

            hillside & 

pasture a 

            moment in 

which something 

            has broken 

open  

The payoff in such “self dissolving” is vision, even of revelation. The alternate line indentions here—and in other poems—seem to echo the rhythm of breathing and the need for meditative space. Although the line arrangements are sometimes quite fluid, the poems throughout show a keen attention to form. This holds true for Lazer’s previous work as well. In his 2020 collection, Covid 19 Sutras, most of the poems unfold in three quatrains, the second and third indented on the page. Previous books, such as Thinking in Jewish, show radical experiments in form, each handwritten poem taking on a distinctively different shape on the page. 

Occasionally, the line arrangements in this recent collection contain humorous wordplay: 

beacon 

 

or a side 

of bacon 

 

did you say 

beckon 

Others contain epigrammatic statements: 

what disappears 

            remains 

invisible residue 

            all yours 

Clearly, Lazer’s work is profoundly influenced not only by his Jewish background but also by his meditative practice and interest in Buddhism. Some of his passages read very much like koans: 

to one who could not 

get up  

            what does 

the weight of things 

            mean 

Largely influenced by his visits to Duncan Farm, a family place some distance from his home in Tuscaloosa, these poems often grow out of a rural environment, with references to dogs, birds, trees, plants, clouds, the weather, morning, and night. The general implication seems to be that our “vanishing” may be achieved through an immersion in elements of the natural world. There are, to be sure, fleeting references to individuals and family members, as well as conflicts in the human world, but these seem to dramatize and contrast with the need for a strong connection with our natural environment.  

Lazer’s work seems to suggest that another mode of salvation comes through language, through the act of committing a sprinkling of words to a blank surface, hoping that it can sustain us and our legacy. He writes, “i am becoming/ an ancestor” and goes on to quote “another old one” who  

asks the question 

            are you ready 

soon 

            every stretch 

of words 

            radiates outward 

The front cover of As We Vanish from Public View is a faint, blurry, photo – an abstract study in shades of gray, perhaps a figure walking. This photo was taken by Lazer’s son Alan during a father-and-son trip to Iceland. The subject is on the verge of vanishing in the mist. The aging poet seems to consider his own inevitable fadeout with: 

mind & its surprising  

            words 

scratching invisible 

            time 

bell sound slowly 

            absorbed into 

what surrounds without 

            boundary 

And yet the book’s final words seem to affirm the poet’s intention to leave the visionary world that he has evoked in this volume to emerge from “a different/ dimension”: 

I walk toward 

            you 

through the mist 

 

i do 

            want 

to return 

Hank Lazer’s work, here and elsewhere, exudes a feeling of peace, a sense of quiet joy, and, in the end, a message of hope in the face of a troubled world. 

Ken Autrey’s work has appeared in Chattahoochee Review, Cimarron Review, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, Texas Review, and many other journals. He has published three chapbooks, the most recent of which, Penelope in Repose, won the 2021 Helen Kay Chapbook Contest. His 2023 collection, Circulation, is available from Dos Madres Press. Emeritus Professor of English at Francis Marion University, Autrey lives in Auburn, Alabama, where he helps coordinate the Third Thursday Poetry Series.