The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go
The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go
Eliot Khalil Wilson is a native of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Critical Theory and American Drama from the University of Alabama in 2000. His work has won awards from the Academy of American Poets and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go is his first book.
“Eliot Wilson’s informed heart casts an ever-widening net of sympathies that trammels up Viet Nam and zoo animals of Paris, Damascus and the Salvation Army Store in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Like the rain he touches everything. He misses little. He sounds the nation, our history, our work, our desires and weeps for those who have yet to be wept for. An impressive and memorable debut.” –Bruce Smith
“Poetry should enliven us, should make us more suspicious of our work-a-day lives that so often oblige us to admit only small burps of feeling. I’ve grown sick of poems nudged along by a tepid heart whose only recommendation is that they are ‘well crafted’ or ‘carefully considered.’ A book of poems should be far more than smart, should in fact, fuel hours of trans-rational frenzy about how to be human, how to observe and engage the traveling circus of society. The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go balances trouble, insight, humor and compassion the way a well-lived life does. Page by page, I was moved to pay progressively more attention to Eliot Wilson’s words, to the energetic chase they embody. We’re long overdue for such poetry.” –Tim Seibles
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