The Crisp Day Closing on My Hand: The Poetry of M. Travis Lane is a
collection of thirty-five of her best poems, selected with an
introduction by Jeanette Lynes. An environmentalist, feminist, and peace
activist, M. Travis Lane is known for witty and meticulously crafted
poems that explore the elusive nature of "home" in both historical and
present contexts and reflect on the identity of the woman poet and what
it means to be a writer. Lane's poems exhibit impressive range and
variety--long poems, short lyrics, serial poems, poems inspired by
visual art--and are richly attentive to the landscapes, both urban and
wild, of her New Brunswick home. They voice a sense of urgency with
respect to ecological crises and war; her poetic attention fixes
unwaveringly on the smallest pebble on the coast of Fundy but is equally
attuned to global patterns of destructive domination.
In her introduction "As Opportunity for Grace, This Life May Serve",
editor Jeanette Lynes discusses how Lane's poetry integrates an
ecopoetic vision with explorations of the artist's task of mapping her
world. Lane's afterword reinforces her sense of the poet's project as a
form of mystical play, a search for patterns in the "unified disunities"
of all things.