Fragile Acts

Juxtaposing the fast pace of contemporary society with the quiet localism and naturalism of the great American transcendentalists, Peterson's sinewy, muscular collection reveals a profoundly intelligent, curious mind leaping from object to thought to emotion. And yet, poem after poem, Peterson somehow binds seemingly unrelated elements into one stunning whole. Youll nod your head in reflection one moment and laugh out loud the next. These moving poems are a profound delight to read.

Peterson writes with wondering beauty: “As a child I knew I was sleeping when I began / falling though still furled in my sheets / and I would look over other peoples shoulders / to see what they were reading / the headlines the footnotes / Extra! Extra! / a boy has left his room through a map on the wall.”

And again later, with a sly smile: “When she twirled and slapped / a mosquito and missed, a red sun stayed on her leg throughout / most of the chapter on Self Reliance.”

"Like 'Brazils undiscovered caverns of amethyst,' Allan Peterson's Fragile Acts is a major find."

—John Ashbery

" A wonder to behold and a joy to read. Allan Peterson's poems dance to the music of time, like light on water or wind in the trees."

—Lewis Lapham

"Allan Peterson's collection Fragile Acts is a spacewalk on the wild side. I loved it. He puts music to the tension between the desperate human experience and the cool removal of the cosmos. His poems are refreshingly discrete artifacts--perfected and edgy-raw at the same time. They stand alone but gain power in one another's presence. This is an exciting new voice, one we've been waiting for."

—Laura Kasischke

"These poems rarely veer far from a well-defined reality that is often rooted in the natural world, fleabane, fish, fast clouds, osprey, and spider, but at the center of that world, and deeply embedded in it, is a thoughtful meditative speaker who both marvels at and raises insightful rhetorical questions about his place among so much mystery. His observing eye, as astute as the most finely-honed telephoto lens, is such that he¹s able to transform even the ordinary into something so exquisite it provokes wonder and awe."

—Mary Jo Bang

“[Allan Petersons] work demands, and deserves, attention.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Allan Petersons meditations on domestic tranquility and ecocatastrophe are so smart that they could actually make you smarter” —Boston Review

"Though Peterson occasionally leads you like Wile E. Coyote into thin air, he is more likely to deliver you. He is a glissando in words."—The Brooklyn Rail

"Allan Peterson's Fragile Acts introduces us to a poet capable of changing from the personal and interior to the global and exterior in a single work, sometimes in a single line."—Shelf Awareness

"Peterson is one of our most valuable poet-thinkers and thinker-poets, a writer who can show us how much is within our grasp and much is beyond it." —LA Review of Books

"Soul-poppingly magnetic.”—The Rumpus

"A page-turner in the truest sense. "—The Cossack Review

"This is a book that belongs in your hands."—Hey Small Press