I made for you a new machine and all it does is hope

Poetry. Spirituality. I MADE FOR YOU A NEW MACHINE AND ALL IT DOES IS HOPE concerns itself with the language of prayer and the action of prayer. Many of the poems the [psalms] in particular are the product of my holding some word or phrase or sound in mind and mouth until it somehow exhales and reveals what word or phrase or sound it leads to. Its something more or less or not at all like dusting off some map that has always been exactly as it needed to be that has never not existed.--Richard Lucyshyn. Richard Lucyshyn sees and hears what others sometimes miss or are not in the mood to receive; his poems change all that; they invite us into a world of astonishing unity and regard into states and ideas visions and mysteries into abundantly and carefully layered regions within that world; were invited to understand marvel and come away with newly minted newly awakened brain waves; Lucyshyns gift to us always leaves us grateful glad and freshly activated.--Dara Wier. Richard Lucyshyns debut collection is a gorgeously tender challenging psalm for the reckoners and seekers among us desperate to make sense of our dissonant and broken world to be better than we are and have been to be again born machined new--its an epic song for the strange unnamable that manages to invent page after page a staggering new genus of ache. This collection is itself the machine that hopes which is the machine we need more than ever right now. Ever incantatory these poems are a choir calling for and summoning grace at every turn.--Allison Titus. I MADE FOR YOU A NEW MACHINE AND ALL IT DOES IS HOPE immediately makes demands of you: say star and say sun // say halo frost and feather. And it immediately tells you things about yourself you might not want to hear: Your penance is shabby...You will always hold dissonance and it will always be weird. Lucyshyn earns this by being infinitely more self-critical: how many backs I tore / it was me what / 39 lashed / what held the whip / was me / what turned away. Striking a seemingly impossible balance between what he calls a practiced stillness attended to and the ecstasy of text Lucyshyn creates a space both critical and celebratory frenetic and meditative contemporary and mythic. And only because he has the integrity to wager memories we dare to hold are we left with the oily residue of hope.--Chris Tonelli