As its title suggests, Chased by Lunacies and Wonders, the poems in this generous book both condemn and praise, grieve and rejoice, negate and affirm the world with all its majestic extremities. In language by turns colloquial and exultant, the poet acknowledges the lunacies that assault our contemporary social life, haunted by the fires torching California, climate changes altering the conditions for life itself, and the worldwide quarantines and national death counts of pandemic disease. The poems are visionary, and glimmer with amplitude and enormous generosity. He holds imagined conversations with various Western writers, both living and dead, to envision a workable cultural valuation, accusing Homer of having “the ethics of a predator,” while praising Virginia Woolf who “erupts again with visions, bursts again with surprising voices.” He overhears Lucifer exclaim, “As we know, the world is fucking magical.” Crenshaw would agree. The journey through this wild collection concludes with the poet reviewing his most intimate relationships, his long marriage, and affirms their decisions to bring children into the flawed generous created world, full of crazy people, saints and devils, and most of us just trying to get by.

Chased by Lunacies and Wonders is Crenshaw’s fourth volume of poetry. Critics have praised this latest collection, stating that “this poetry wanders through language and image unfolding a new world ‘where the miracles are raw’.” “When you find yourself wondering at ‘the complicated/glory of the still living,’ another writer states, ‘you can be sure that Brad Crenshaw has your back.”