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Captivity Narratives by Richard Blevins

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At once unnervingly learned and boldly feelingful, Richard Blevins is  a  hero of the contemporary
long-form poem, and Captivity Narratives’ driven reconsiderations of the disappeared careers of
photographer Fred Holland Day and poet Adelaide Crapsey have a sweep and an intimacy that
excite from line to alert line. With their heady synchronies and hyperlucid lyric fragments, their
unearthings and upendings, their questing meditations and meditative narratives, their bursts of
aphorism and doses of tonic fact, these are poems of an unusually welcoming intelligence and
of an unassuming mastery. “If you want to keep a secret, print it in a poem,” Blevins writes, and
fortunate is any reader privy to the confidences volunteered in these generous, essential pages.     
        Gary Lutz, Author of Stories in the Worst Way and I Looked Alive

With a few disparate lines, Rich Blevins invokes an era, and with them we see
‘peripherally’ (as the poet similarly characterizes Day’s own images) two nearly
forgotten artists, Fred Holland Day and Adelaide Crapsey, and their ‘imaginary
narratives.’ At times a surreal journey through time, space, and history, at others a
perceptive exploration of sensibilities, the Captivity Narratives is both lyrical and elegiac.
                             Patricia J. Fanning, author of Through an Uncommon Lens:
                                                       The Life and Photography of F. Holland Day