The other night while eating Chinese and reading the winter issue of Ploughshares I discovered Lance Larson and his astonishing “Sad Jar of Atoms.”  I tumbled into a rabbit hole of language love that I haven’t felt since my first reading of Louise Erdrich’s Last Report of the Miracles from Little No Horse. This is true love. Deep love. Crush love.

“Life is a jar of maybe, of who knows, whereby we grow older and bones turn brittle as hope. Some jars live along time, like sea turtles, like Benjamin Franklin, a jar of genius filled with Poor Richard and flirting in French. . .”

Lance Larson, poet genius, poet laureate of Utah, I love you. I want to hold your prose babies in my prayerful hands. I am lost in cadence and find myself in a place where words are texture and all sound is a dazzle . . all because of your “Sad Jar of Atoms.”

Thank you for your Byronic reference. Thank you for “a jar made of sizzle and cordite.” Thank you for your “river and the eye of a bird.”