(fleeting)

#

Mark Scroggins:

Written—composed—assembled—or made, through processes both of aleatory and of careful composition, over the course of a moment of profound historical, social, and existential angst, the poems of Robert van Vliet’s Vessels are marvelous, echoing, delicate crystals of profound stillness. ¶ They resonate with wisdom—the vivid metaphors of the I Ching, Thoreau’s quotidian observations, ancient Gnosis. But these vessels of stillness shiver with the promise of both revelation and obliteration, leaving the reader moved and disquieted by van Vliet’s subtle lyric art. —Mark Scroggins