Where I Came Here From
"Where I Came Here From" is a collection of Zen Buddhist inspired poems that occasionally wander a path to the north—to Iceland, Christopher Burawa’s birthplace. The Iceland poems reflect, as Cynthia Hogue suggests, an “Icelandic Zen,” of the Self examining itself, unearthing what remains of his connections to the past and the trauma of separation, of being caught in the illusion of the fixated, isolated self. In these poems he follows the schematics of the skandhas and dependent origination, tracing the activity of mind and as the reborn self that arises from its dwelling.
Bio
Christopher Burawa is a graduate of Arizona State University, having earned a BA English in 1987; MA in English in 1994; and MFA in creative writing in 2004.
Praise for this book
Very few books of poetry move me the way Christopher Burawa’s 'Where I Came Here From' has with its celebration of the imagination. The poems are like trapdoors, giving way to a world where you are both lost and found. Here, you find your way—through wit and earnestness, the playful and the profound—until 'the cosmos breaks / open to let you through.
Blas Falconer
