Lyrical Years

Much like the cherry tomatoes in his ode, Gary Grossman's poems are ripe and tasty, often coming in small containers. Here are moments caught in nets of words, spilling across the page. They leave you with a smile on your face. They leave you with the beauty of language, the "slow-rolling valley" and "fodder for the next star." This fun collection commemorates a personal and natural history, the sensibility of a vertebrate ecologist who finds himself in a time of change-not only a pandemic but his retirement-looking forward and looking back, redefining himself. Here is a new tattoo, a buzzard on a roadside pew, cicada love. Enjoy every bit.

-Janisse Ray, author of A House of Branches and Red Lanterns



In Lyrical Years, Gary D. Grossman has managed to take flashes of life and encapsulate them in poetic gems that sparkle as each is held up to the light. These are poems that you will come back to for a second and third read to see what else may be reflected in their astute captures of life.

-James Lewis, editor, Verse-Virtual



This is a wonderful volume of poems, filled with life of all kinds and well-earned experience. Reading it will touch your mind and your emotions with truth and grace. Gary Grossman has give us much to consider and more to enjoy for days on end.

-Philip Lee Williams, member of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame



Gary Grossman blurs lines beautifully in Lyrical Years. His words balance on the edge; teetering, teasing-even tantalizing the reader with verse that dances between science and sensuality. It's boundary breaking and an eclectic jolt arcing head and heart.

-J. Drew Lanham, PhD, author of The Home Place and Sparrow Envy, and Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Clemson University



Gary Grossman takes readers into his world, infused with heartache and humor, snakes and kudzu, hummingbirds and gifts abundant. In the process we learn about his orphaned life, about life-that you can strike out 1,326 times and also be a hero, also be a graceful, intimate poet.

-Susan Fox Rogers, author of Learning the Birds



Walt Whitman once described Leaves of Grass, his life's work, not as a book, but as a man. This feeling, of a life contained within a poetic text, is also expressed by Gary Grossman's Lyrical Years. From youthful loves to later-life tattoos, Grossman's verses lay bare the personal truths of life while always embracing the most lyrical aspects of the craft.

-Jordan A. Rothacker, author of The Pit, and No Other Stories