The Poet Laureate of Jones Street

TOURIST (en anglais) available/ disponible à:
amazon.com/ amazon.fr/ Barnesandnoble.com / Powell’s Books.com

PARMI LES ETRANGERS QUE J’AI CONNUS TOUTE MA VIE
AMONG STRANGERS I’VE KNOW ALL MY LIFE
(en anglais et en français) à amazon.fr
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TOURIST

Fraser ’54 Offers a Cast of Characters in His Poems
Nov. 30, 2009 by David Low

Sanford Fraser Tourist. In his third poetry collection, Tourist (NYQ Books, 2009), Sanford Fraser ’54 reveals a mastery of the lyric form and plainspoken language. The collection is divided into three sections: Strangers, Roles and Connections. In the first section, the narrator and/or characters in the poems are strangers isolated from and emotionally detached from others; in the second, they play various roles in the world beyond themselves; and finally in the last section, they experience emotional attachments with others.

Fraser shares the following observations about his new book:

“The busloads of tourists who ride and walk through the streets of my neighborhood each day, often remind me of myself arriving in France years ago, of experiencing again what it is to be a stranger in a strange world. In many of my poems, which are usually short character studies, I recreate this experience. The first section of Tourist is devoted to strangers who do not relate to others, who remain outside of the community they live in or visit. Some take home things, souvenirs—not memories; others remain strangers because they are illegal or simply newly arrived immigrants, speaking a strange language; still others isolate themselves from the world in various ways with their obsessions and imaginary barriers.

“Various roles these characters play in order to fit into society are explored in the second section of the collection, such as the role of the tough guy, or the roles of blind obedience and passive aggression. The ability to reach out beyond oneself and connect with others is explored in the last section: through desire or empathy, and finally, through art and imagination.”

Fraser’s interest in poetry began at Wesleyan in a class taught by George Creeger, professor of English emeritus. He did not begin writing poetry until the age of 50 in New York City, where he now lives. His first collection of poems, 14th Street, was published in the New School Chapbook Series, and his second, a French/English bilingual collection, Parmi les étrangers que j’ai connus toute ma vie/ (Among Strangers I’ve Known All My Life, Tarabuste Editions), appeared in France in 2007. This second book will be republished in 2010 by NYQ Books.
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Jalel El Gharbi

http://jalelelgharbipoesie.blogspot.com/

La poésie de Sanford Fraser, poète new-yorkais, choisit des images de la vie pour dire la vie. Elle se saisit de l’instant éphémère pour dire sa soif d’éternité. C’est une poésie qui, comme chez Cummings ou chez ce poète François de Cornière (il y a longtemps que je n’ai plus entendu parler de lui), l’anodin insinue que rien n’est anodin dans la vie. Sanford Fraser happe des images qui, par elles-mêmes disent que le monde est ce qu’il est : chose immonde. Il laisse entendre l’immensité de la solitude. Une solitude quasiment ontologique : nous apparaissons et nous disparaissons seuls.
Cela fait des années que je suis attentivement le cheminement poétique de mon ami Sanford Fraser et je puis dire qu’il dit quelque chose d’essentiel : les réalités sociales sont plutôt l’expression de réalités ontologiques car l’existence nous offre à chaque instant des allégories de l’être, du néant. Il suffit de regarder. Et le dernier recueil en date de Fraser ne pouvait que s’intituler Tourist car ce qui définit le touriste, ce passager, ce passant, c’est qu’il voit. Le touriste : un être du regard qui passe.
Voici le poème qui donne son titre au recueil. Il est remarquer que la fin de ce poème est le titre même de son premier recueil « among stangers I’have known all my life »

Tourist est publié ici par NYQ Books, 2009 (New York Quarterly Books). amazon.fr/ amazon.com/Barnes & Noble/ Powells’ Books.
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The poetry of Sanford Fraser, New York, chooses images from life to show life.  It catches the ephemeral instant to express thirst for the eternal. It is a poetry in which, as in Cummings or François de Cornière (for a long time I have not heard of him) the insignificant suggests that nothing in life is insignificant.

Sanford Fraser snaps pictures that by themselves say the world is what it is: an impure thing.
He lets us hear the immensity of solitude. A solitude almost ontological: we appear and we disappear alone.

For years, I have attentively followed the poetic development of my friend Sanford Fraser and I can say that he says something essential: social realities are truly the expression of ontological realities because existence gives us every other minute allegories of being and of nothingness. It is sufficient to look. The latest collection of Fraser could only be called Tourist because it defines the tourist, this passenger, this passer-by, is what he sees. The tourist: a witness who passes.

Here is the poem that which gives its title to the collection. He pointed out to me that the last four lines of this poem make up the title of his first collection, «Among strangers I’ve have known all my life»….

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Tourist, Editorial Statement

This book of lyrical poems by Sanford Fraser is divided into three sections: Strangers, Roles, and Connections. In the first section, the narrator and/or characters in the poems are strangers isolated from and emotionally detached from others; in the second,they play various roles in the world beyond themselves, and finally in the last section, they have connections, emotional attachments to others. Fraser’s mastery of the lyric form and plainspoken language makes the reader a tourist in their own right every time they pick up and read this jewel of a book.

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Here, the Outsider speaks. Broken, human, just like the rest of us.
But honest, oh so honest.
Sanford Fraser has crafted a fine collection.
Here he examines the small things and the spaces and people
around them. True, perceptive, and evocative throughout.
This is good work.

-Phillip Levine
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Sanford Fraser is terse, poignant, playful, sly, sharp tongued, urban & urbane, humane & crafty, all at the same time.

Wherever his keen eye turns, a blue haired girl crossing 14th Street, a crippled woman on a suburban lawn, a raucous motorcycle macho man, an oblivious business man in a European suit, a waitress, a warmonger, a pinup girl, a bum, he sees a poem needing to be painted with words.
Often with just a few slim couplets, a score or so of perfect nouns & verbs. But beneath the hard surface of these gems is a greater beauty, an emotional interior of pain, of isolation, of memories & regrets amid the treasured  temporary connections of everyday life.

If you visit any of his “Tourist” poems (My Wall, In Front of the waitress, Love Song are among my favorites) you will want to return again and again.

-Angelo Verga
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Sanford Fraser’s “Tourist”makes Camus’s “The Stranger” look like existentialism for toddlers.  Fraser writes about existentialism the way Ernest Hemingway wrote about boxing, you can tell they lived it first. ˜Tourist” is a treatise on memory.

It is not for television watchers or John Wayne fans. Like Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing,˜Where have all the flowers gone? I say they went to Sanford Fraser. Through
the reconstruction of his memories, he keeps more than flowers alive for us. In essence.
he helps us claim back our own memories. A great book.

Hal Sirowitz, former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York
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14th Street Chapbook

Each of Sanford Fraser’s poems is the
lucid and often effervescent distillation
of an experience.  He is gifted with the
ability to contain in each millimeter of
a word and in a single and quirky
pentameter line all the immense
dimensions of his wit and compassion
and insight.

Pearl London
New School Chapbook Series of 1995

14éme Rue

Pearl London, son ancien professeur
à la New School de New York a écrit à son sujet :

Chacun des poèmes de Sanford Fraser est
la distillation lucide et souvent effervescente
d’une expérience personnelle. Il possède une
réelle capacité à placer dans chaque parcelle
de mot de ces pentamètres excentriques
toutes les immenses dimensions de son esprit,
de sa compassion et de son intelligence.

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by Jean-Christophe Belleveaux

In his book  Among strangers I’ve known all my life (Tarabuste éditions, Rue du Fort,36170, St-Benoît-du-Sault) Sanford Fraser offers us poems whose style is very “american”: daily life described in its ready-made banality, but from where there emerges an inimitable atmosphere found, for example, in an Edward Hopperpainting “through this room of cups & pills /the curtain billowing”.

by Jean-Christophe Belleveaux

Parmi les étrangers que j’ai connus toute ma vie de Sanford Fraser (éditions Tarabuste Rue du Fort 36170 St-Benoît-du-Sault ; 12 euros) nous propose des poèmes d’une facture très « américaine » : quotidien décrit dans sa banalité de ready-made mais d’oùse dégage cette atmosophere inimitable qu’on retrouverait par exemple dans un tableau d’Edward Hopper « à travers cette chambre de fioles et de pilules / le rideau qui se gonfle »
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Sanford Fraser: PARMI LES ERANGERS QUE J’AI CONNUS TOUTE MA VIE (Tarabuste)

C’est son premier recueil, ayant publié jusqu’à présent en revues, en France et Belgique, et aux Etats-Unis. Ses poèmes sont très américains, la plupart décrivent, situent et forcément on reconnaît New York et autres grandes villes. L’atmosphère des rues, grouillante et bruyante, et le comportement des gens, la première partie s’appelle « au pays de la bouffe », c’est tout dire. C’est genre de poèmes qu’on regarde plus qu’on ne lit. Des instantanés noir et blanc sur des scènes de trottoir, de restau et Sanford Fraser derrière le viseur qui apporte sa mesure, son contrepoint souvent ironique et lucide.

Review by Jacques Morin, editor: “Décharge,” No. 137, p.111. mars 2008

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Un pan de la bibliothèque du poète

Jalel El Gharbi   le 10 septembre 2008

Il me plaît aujourd’hui d’évoquer mon ami le poète new-yorkais Sanford Fraser dont les textes affirment la primauté du poétique sur toute autre considération, malgré la prose ambiante. C’est à travers le quotidien, l’anodin de tous les jours, qu’il ne cesse d’interpréter, que Fraser dit la gravité des choses. Démarche qui insinue la nécessité de la vigilance car, à bien y réfléchir, rien n’est anodin. Et la menace pèse sur nous tous.

Fraser a publié en France dans les revues : Arpa, Décharge, Phréatique…
Son recueil Among Strangers I’ve Known All my Live a été publié chez Tarabuste dans une édition bilingue avec une traduction de Françoise Parouty sous le titre Parmi les étrangers que j’ai connus toute ma vie. Ce recueil a eu des échos des plus favorables.

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J’aime, Parmi les étrangers que j’ai connus toute ma vie, Sanford Fraser, (Tarabuste). Sanford vit aux Etats-Unis mais a déjà pas mal publié en France celui-ci est traduit
par Françoise Parouty et vous trouverez dans ce numéro quelques testes inédits d’un poète qui écrit  des poèmes: « à la distillation lucide et souvent effervescente d’une
expérience personnelle ».
Pierre LESIEUR
Comme en Poésie n ̊ 37

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