A Meditation On Fire

Jason Allen’s A Meditation on Fire is a fierce, courageous collection of poems, a ferocious, yet meditative mission to dig for the truth beneath the surface of all that it means to be human. Allen’s poetry is gritty and lyrical, profound and sardonic, and his use of language is as precise as a scalpel. Allen is willing to risk being vulnerable while exploring the darkest moments of his life, and all the while he straddles the line between compassion and desire. A must read for anyone who loves poetry, and for those who don’t yet know they love poetry. What an amazing, powerful book! –
-Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award Winner

Jason Allen’s A Meditation on Fire is a book of survival: survival of addiction, one s family and hometown, erotic and companionate love and the shell casings it leaves behind. The self is a plane crash that never was, the dead talk back, and we plunge into haystacks for love, no matter how many times we have felt only the wrong needles. If any of the following interest you–hitchhiking, abandoned hotels, mummy fingers, dead men singing the blues, kitchen knives as paperweights, a piano eating its player–then this book is for you. Searing and vulnerable, A Meditation on Fire is a book of poems you will want to yell out the window of a speeding car, to read aloud in bars and bedrooms, really anywhere you are.
–Ruth Madievsky, author of Emergency Brake

We’ve got ourselves a live one here. Jason Allen’s A Meditation on Fire is fire itself, giving off a blistering, passionate heat. These poems lean into the world with defiance, demanding to be listened to, demanding to be sanctified. Propelled by the rhythmic energy of their clear, direct language and the intensity of their emotions, these poems are unafraid of the grit and broken glass of the street they must pass through on their way to honest witness and hard-earned survival. One of the most powerful first books I’ve read in years.
–Jim Daniels, author of Eight Mile High and Birth Marks