The Camel's Pedestal, Poems 2009-2017

Poetry. "There is a splendid lucidity to Tardos's writing, a jesting, inquisitive spirit nimbly examining the relationship between language and reality in inventive articulations that jingle with wit and perceptivity. Lines like 'I am lost in a desert of my own making' and 'Do words work as wood works' juggle phenomenology, advancing what Tardos observes as 'the true state of things expressed in phenomena but inexpressible in language.' Contradiction, paradox, incongruity; it's all here, the entire caravan of linguistic apparatus crossing the dunes of this enigma, this desolation of self- awareness, this epistemology of dromedaries on the very edge of things. This collection is well-crafted, precise, imaginative, clear. I feel a great intelligence moving among these words. It's exhilarating. This is the kind of work that inspires me."—John Olson

"Free-ranging, intelligent, a poetry of wit and survival—to be 'crazy not to go crazy' and not going crazy and making art in the face of that: 'finally taking a stand... there is no shortage of things to do on the path to a better life' and 'letting things be,' 'tip-toeing around the good and the terrible'—it's so good to be taken to the source so lightly, so often, without eliding the brutal, the complex, the incomprehensible or the gorgeous. This is the book that does that. Reader, read on..."—Maurice Scully