Men in Suits by Norman Fischer

Norman Fischer’s Men in Suits is profound and important and necessary. Multiple levels of discourse convey innumerable meanings, yet each meaning is grounded in a fierce sense of what it means to be truly human, and how so many, in so many spheres, neglect humanity. Fischer’s language, which includes the words of Lear and Dr. Johnson, is engaging and awe-inspiring but always returns us, often through free fall, to a scathing critique of society and its perpetrators of injustice (and their victims). Fischer sees the world feelingly, and makes darkness visible by carefully depicting the interrelationships between guns, grief, rage, power, helplessness, money, capitalism, un-living, death: categories far too prominent, within the lexicon of contemporary America.

—Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno, poet, translator and biographer, author of Remission, Mussoorie-Montague Miscellany, and many more.

There is so much to savor in these poems and texts that border on the riotous. In this book, Norman Fischer writes with the kind of bravery without which one writes in vain. The "men in suits" are scoundrels and this poet pulls no punches regarding their cruelty and stupidity. Here, the aesthetic life is examined. Race, class, time, politics, nationalism, and spirituality are not sidestepped. Utilizing a shifting array of techniques, forms, language registers, and styles, the poet weaves fury with the redemptive. MEN IN SUITS is a necessary and powerful book.

—Uche Nduka, author of SCISSORWORK

In MEN IN SUITS, Norman Fischer “do the police in different voices,” resounding in the echo chamber of our own waste land. Think COVID, think authoritarianism, think unethical uses of language. He does the voices of TV shows, John Milton, opera, Shakespeare, the US Constitution, narratives of pain, capital, Googlers, and a pointed and extended dictionary definition of “that.” Which is not to say that these voices are “authentic,” just that they’re true. The confusion is all, to recast Hamlet’s famous line. A marvelous follow-up to MUSEUMS OF CAPITALISM, this book lays our sickness(es) on the table. Fischer solves nothing—how could he—but he points, like the word “that,” so we better know the landscape for which no GPS is adequate. The book ends with Buddha’s words and Giotto’s painting and “finally everything is clear or so they say. They say that.”

—Susan M. Schultz

Norman Fischer is a poet, essayist, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest. He has written and published steadily since the late 1970’s. His latest poetry titles are Nature, There Was a Clattering As…, and The Museum of Capitalism. Chax Press brought out his Selected Poems 1980-2013 in 2022. His Experience: On Thinking, Writing, Language and Religion was published in the Poetics Series by University of Alabama Press in 2016. His latest Buddhist title is When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen. He lives on the California coast with his wife Kathie, also a Zen priest. He is the founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation (wwww.everydayzen.org)

Book Information:

· Paperback: 134 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-418-5