Motion Studies

The poems in Motion Studies steady our ears and ignite our imagination on the dazzling workings of language and verbal song. With superb intellect, Brad Richard draws a wondrous and discursive line between history and art, and along the way, brightens our bodies and hearts, as he says in one poem, to the fullness of each other and our cultural inheritances.---Major Jackson (Hoops and Holding Company)

The poems in Brad Richard's extraordinary new collection Motion Studies are lush and lyrical, passionate and elegant. This collection offers a range of forms, from the ekphrastic to the documentary to the confessional. Whether writing from the perspective of Thomas Eakins or describing his father's art studio in the flooded ruins of New Orleans, Richard unflinchingly observes the world. This is a book about vision, about what it truly means to see.---Nicole Cooley (The Afflicted Girls and Breach)

From the broken spaces of our cities, bodies, and hearts, Brad Richard has come to mend. Here is a poet of exacting lyricism and refreshing voice. Mr. Richard is a healer. He doesn't lift the scalpel of irony but instead leads us to the curative waters of our own human experience.---Matthew Dickman (All-American Poem)

Brad Richard's first book, Habitations, was followed by the chapbook The Men in the Dark. Richard is the 2002 Winner in the Poets & Writers, Inc., Writers Exchange competition, and his work has appeared in journals including Bayou, Hunger Mountain, The Iowa Review, Literary Imagination, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Passages North, and Witness.