The Quarry

By Dan Lechay

Book Overview

Once or twice in a generation a poet comes along who captures the essential spirit of the American Midwest and gives name to the peculiar nature that persists there. Like James Wright, Robert Bly, Ted Kooser, and Jared Carter before him, Dan Lechay reshapes our imagination to include his distinct and profound vision of this undersung region.

The poetry of Dan Lechay, collected in The Quarry, constructs a myth of the Midwest that is at once embodied in the permanence of the landscape, the fleeting nature of the seasons, and the eternal flow of the river. Lechay writes of memory and the mutability of memory, of the change brought on a person by the years lived and lost, and of the stoic attempts made by those around him to elicit an order and rationale to their lives.

The Quarry is the first full-length collection from this seasoned poet. Final judge Alan Shapiro in writing about The Quarry said: "If Dan Lechay's poems often begin with the ordinary details and circumstances of life in a small Midwestern town or city, they always end by reminding us that no moment of life is ever ordinary, that 'Nothing is more mysterious than the way things are.'

The Quarry is a marvelous, disquieting, extraordinarily beautiful book that meditates on fundamental questions of time and change in and through a clear-eyed yet loving evocation of everyday existence. Under Lechay's soulful gaze, the backyards, neighborhoods, animals, and landscapes he describes dramatize the often wrenching connection between beauty and loss, evanescence and memory. The Quarry is a thoroughly mature and accomplished book."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0821415344
• ISBN13: 9780821415344
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Length: 70 Pages
• Weight: 0.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.2" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

A delightful, memorable read

This jewel by Iowa poet Dan Lechay deserves widespread recognition. Why? Maybe it's because the poems speak to the everyday occurrences and details of life in small midwestern towns or cities that make it so attractive to me. Maybe it's because his work reminds me of such accomplished poets as Robert Bly, James Wright, and especially the just appointed Poet Laureate of the U.S., Ted Kooser, which caused me to read and then re-read this wonderful vision of the American Midwest that will be familiar to every reader. The book was the winner of the 2003 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and the comments of judge Alan Shapiro eloquently tell it all: "Under Lechay's soulful gaze, the backyards, neighborhoods, animals, and landscapes he describes dramatize the often wrenching connection between beauty and loss, evanescence and memory...a thoroughly mature and accomplished book." A delightful, memorable read.