Buffalo Laughter

I have long wished to hold in my hands Richard Nester's first collection of poetry, with its sons and fathers, its sometimes riotous family collisions between the Southern Protestant boy and his Jewish in-laws, its girls and suicides, its cold wars, and its jazz. I am glad to welcome and recommend Buffalo Laughter to the world.Marly Youmans, poet, novelist, and National Book Award NomineeRichard Nester’s debut collection, Buffalo Laughter, is the work of a poet whose maturity, observant nature and intelligence leaves little doubt of his gifts. In poems such as “First Work,” he writes of being set the task of pulling nails to find that, with enough verve, he can produce “smoke and spark.” It is there, in the heat produced by grit and words, survival and syntax, lived experience and metaphor that Nester turns anecdote into art. The tone of the poems range, as do the landscapes, and the various vernaculars heard across America to condense great distances into succinct images, recollection