"Eshleman's work is a dazzling attempt to restore man's capacity to understand nature as divine, demonic, and human." -Kenneth Warren, American Book Review
Eshleman's is a highly individual poetry, yet one that demonstrates how each of us belongs, not just to our self, but also to those numberless selves who've gone before and to the collective human consciousness that underlies all our thoughts. Here are hymns of praise for the great image-makers of the late Ice Age and to their modern descendants; here too are tributes to the master-spirits of the poet's inner life. From Scratch is a suite of poems, each exploring a station on one poet's way toward self-creation.
"In extending the 'bridge' of proprioception from Olson to Artaud, from Reich to Ferenczi, from Kundalini to Cro-Magnon", wrote critic Kenneth Warren in American book Review, "Eshleman's work is a dazzling attempt to restore man's capacity to understand nature as divine, demonic, and human". Registering the poet's affinity of spirit, many of the poems in Eshleman's newest book reflect on the lives and works of creative artists: William Blake, Willem de Kooning, Nora Jaffe, Bei Dao, Francis Bacon, Chaim Soutine, Antonin Artaud. Other poems in "From Scratch" range through time and history from the mythic-Paleolithic to the topical present, from the caves of the Dorgogne to the courtroom of O.J. Simpson, zooming in and out from the cosmic to the present.
