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Every so often, even in a twenty-first-century America drenched in irony, an American poet comes along who gives us back the world as it is. In Gabriel Fried's debut volume, Making the New Lamb Take, Fried seems to step aside, so that the reader can weave through the details of daily life, dream-life and the afterlife—the Ferris wheel of a seasonal carnival, the streets in snow, the infant deaths, the dog guarding the front porch, the Bible stories and myths so well known they seem populated by friends and relatives . . . the distance between myth and the everyday, collapsed. We remember Eliot's dictum that only a poet with personality in the first place is able to repress it. And we welcome this Gabriel, who gives us—instead of yet another hip, new, media-ready version of the self—the world we live.
Gabriel Fried grew up in upstate New York. His poems have appeared in a number of journals, including The American Scholar, Drunken Boat, The Gettysburg Review, The Great River Review, and The Paris Review. He lives in New York City, where he edits the poetry series at Persea Books.
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