Amazing Grace

Larry Thomas's ample menagerie - rattlesnakes, mockingbirds, turkey vultures - transports me to his risky, abundant earth. There, grandmother, wife, and daughter celebrate and grieve and endure the daily. He shows little girls at the zoo outside a cage of white tigers; cowhands and bikers; lovers bathing waist-deep in the Gulf, as if splashing themselves 'with heaven.' Larry himself is like the woodcarver in one of my favorite poems, carving 'gulls, skimmers, pelicans,' setting them free 'with the blade / of his pocketknife.' He writes 'Of Beasts Become Angels,' 'Of Eyes Wondrously Wild,' 'Of Crows and Comfields,' and 'Amazing Grace' - and I believe. - Walt McDonald, 2001 Texas Poet Laureate ""Larry Thomas's poems sing out praise, sorrow and the sheer human relief of survival. The rhythms of Amazing Grace transpose from blues to gospel with a riff of rockabilly. You'll be glad to listen."" - Kathleene West, Poetry Editor, Puerto del Sol