SELECTED REVIEWS AND COMMENTS ON JOHN LANE’S PUBLISHED WORK 1985-2003:

Waist Deep in Black Water (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2002)

“… wonderful…”

--The Wall Street Journal

“John Lane finds stories in rocks or water or wind. He is a storyteller whose range

is the outdoors, from the high peaks to the low swamps. His essays… shine with a sense

of discovery about the outside world and within.”

-- The State (Columbia, SC) 12/01/02

“An eloquent inquiry into our culture’s sense of place.”

--The Asheville Citizens-Times

November 24, 2002

"Concise forays into the heart of places scattered throughout the Americas

and within his family's history . . . Lane has a fluid eye in a 'world

where time moves in more than one direction and no landscape holds steady

for long,' and it's energizing to see through that eye, open as it is to

both light and darkness."

--Kirkus Reviews

September 1, 2002

“…Lane’s command of language and images is riveting, and his stories are fetching. All 18 pieces carry explicit and implicit pleas for stewardship of the natural world, and all are semi-autobiographical (as were the essays of Henry David Thoreau, of whom the reader will be reminded in reading John Lane).

--Southern Scene (published in 107 Southern newspapers)

August 12, 2002

“John Lane writes with equal measures of wit, wisdom, passion and humor about natural places that matter to him-a medicine wheel in the Big Horns, a cypress swamp in Florida, a rain forest in Surinam, a barrier island off the coast of Georgia, not to mention the priceless woods and rivers near his home in South Carolina. Like all good nature writers, Lane explores himself as he explores the landscapes that inspire him, and this book is a wonderful account, written with clarity and depth, of his travels within and without. John Lane takes the land seriously. His essays matter.”

--Christopher Camuto, author of A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge, and Another Country: Journeying to the Cherokee Mountains

"Intriguing and well-wrought essays from a southern boy who is a collector of stories, each like a pretty rock gathered from some high place. John Lane's pockets are full. His informants are wind and sage, storms and dark water, a love of land, the strange muteness of history. This is a book of searching, traveling through the uncharted territory where the human psyche meets wildness, to glean what lies in the depths of life. Lane's adventures carry us down many unknown and beautiful roads; like the best of journeys, they bring us back to ourselves."

--Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

“John Lane's essays are each a gem: occurring naturally, apparently effortlessly, but revealing beauty beyond anything man-made. This is a wonderful collection, and John Lane is an important American author.”

--Bret Lott, author of Oprah Book club selection Jewel

“In eloquently natural prose, John Lane's essays draw us into a sense of

intimacy with the world, from hidden domestic treasures to the darkly threatening backwaters of the Yucatan. Together the essays become what might be the most intriguing form of memoir: we leave the book feeling we've come to know the the kind of observing, truth-telling, daring character we wait to hear more from.”

--Rosa Shand, author of The Gravity of Sunlight

”In this engaging collection of narrative essays, John Lane has taken the notion of Southern story telling beyond its immediate boundaries, letting it roam to the cairns of Wyoming, the crocodile lairs of the Yucatan, the cypress swamps of Florida, even the jungles of Suriname.  Reflective, attentive to both people and place, naturalist Lane carefully reveals the landscape---of outer geography and inner spirit---that helps define us.”

--Bill Belleville, author of Deep Cuba and River of Lakes

“John Lane is a good snake man full of the kind of homesickness that snakes represent to the cognoscenti, and his writing will satisfy others afflicted with that homesickness.”

--Padgett Powell, author of Edisto and A Woman Named Drown

“Any life worth living is full of friction, contradiction, and errancy. John Lane has led a life worth living. He accepts its difficulties and open-endedness with remarkable equanimity. He does not dramatize, advertise, or accuse himself. His narratives are always excursions, which may be into the exotic outback of Surinam, up a local mountain road, or down a suburban creek. They produce knowledge that is never final, momentary illumination of what cannot be systematically elucidated. The stories have real drama and real grief, yet a musing and bemused detachment is their dominant tone. That, and a serenely implacable resistance to the psychological and ecological atrocities that are committed in the name of what is sold to us as the American Way of Life.”

--Franklin Burroughs, author of Billy Watson’s Croker Sack and The River Home

“Waist Deep in Black Water is a trek into two realms: wild landscapes that are among the most mysterious and compelling on earth, and the tangled halls of human experience. John Lane’s writing is casual and honest, but also full of insight. He gracefully accomplishes two of the essayist’s most difficult tasks: building a sense of place and revealing the workings of his heart.”

--Jan Deblieu, author of Hatteras Journal and the Burroughs Medal-winning Wind

“John Lane’s Waist Deep in Black Water is a compelling book that draws readers into many worlds. Life is an adventure for Lane: his work, his travels, his everyday activities are of a piece. Passion and caring inform his life and his writing. Communities, landscapes, ecosystems, people, and all living things matter to him. Waist Deep in Black Water is a gift to readers who are seeking ways to explore the good and wondrous in the lives and passions of others.”

--Melissa Walker, author of Living on Wilderness Time

***

The Dead Father Poems (Raleigh, NC: Horse & Buggy Press, 2000)

“… a compelling, lovely series of poems tied to losses… not a false word or false step in them…they confront grief and healing with the tongues of memory, the flickers of revelation.”

--The State (Columbia, SC)

***

The Woods Stretched for Miles: New Nature Writing from the South

Edited by John Lane & Gerald Thurmond (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1999)

“This is an important book--the first of its kind exclusively on the Southeast. It should appeal to general readers who wish to read about the genre in the Southeast, about the long and complex relationship between American culture and nature, and also about the controversial environmental issues in the region.”

-- John Murray, editor of American Nature Writing

“Mingling environmental concerns, naturalist observation and appreciation of the South’s distinctive landscape and culture, this adventurous anthology is full of indelible forays deep into nature, the American South, and ecology.”

--Publishers Weekly (March 29, 1999)

“...these writers are careful and accurate observers of both emotion and place... Recommended for public and academic libraries collecting nature writing and regional literature.”

--Library Journal

“The editorial balance of tone and approach makes this book a pleasure to read and a valuable resource of models for students of nature writing.”

--News and Record (Greensboro, NC)

“The region’s bone-deep regard for the land is the theme that binds together these diverse subjects--from alligators to hurricanes. What truly makes this anthology shine, though, is the sheer quality of the words and the strength of each writer’s passion for the natural world.”

--Southern Living (June 1999)

***

Midnight on the Water by Mark O’Connor (with poetry improvisations by John Lane (New York: Sony Classical CD, 1998)

“O’Connor varies the program. Six caprices pay tribute to 19th-century violinist and composer Nicol Paganini. Four improvisations acquire programmatic depth from companion poems by John Lane.”

--The Tennessean (Nashville, TN), album review by Jay Orr

“The art of poetry has found some new supporters in the music world... Midnight on the Water features four “improvisations” which, as the name implies, are basically “done in the moment,” says his spokesman. While that makes for great music, it also made putting liner notes together a little more difficult. So O’Connor decided to enlist the help of Spartanburg, South Carolina poet John Lane to interpret in verse his improvised compositions. The liner notes now feature four poems...”

--My Launch (web review)

***

Hub City Anthology: Spartanburg Writers & Artists Edited by John Lane & Betsty Teter (Spartanburg, SC: Holocene, 1996)

“Novelist Lee Smith says you can’t swing a dead cat in Chapel Hill, where she lives, and not hit a writer. A new anthology of personal essays shows that the same must be true for Spartanburg, SC. . . The book is a carefully constructed, lively anthology with both words and pictures to enjoy and ponder.”

--The Charlotte Observer, reviewed by Michael Chitwood

“Hub City is bringing the dream of community back into the body of industrial sleep”

--Point Magazine (Columbia, SC)

***

Against Information & Other Poems (Cullowhee, NC: New Native Press, 1995)

“Against Information is a provocative act of defiance against the “Internet” spirit of our time. Lane often mentions and alludes to William Blake, but instead of Blake’s blank verse, he writes in large chunks and slabs of concentrated verse paragraphs, distinguishable from prose only because incantatory. His poems, epic in scope (indeed, they read like latter-day versions of Blake’s prophetic books) satirise inhuman jargon and technological gadgetry. His is a dark vision of lives shackled by PCs, mobile telephones, bleepers [sic], faxes, you name it.”

--Lines Review No. 138 (Edinburgh, Scotland), reviewed by Mario Relich

“In a time when poets run in fear of content, especially the content sustaining the language we all live by, Lane’s fearless celebration of the materials of words...is a sign of hope… We need him.”

--Small Press Review (California), front page review, June ‘95, reviewed by Joe Napora

“Startling...Lane likes to stand cliches on their ears and the world on its head, and his results are often hilarious. When the poems are deadly accurate-- as they almost always are-- the hilarity is doubled.”

--The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), reviewed by Fred Chappell

“ . . a controlled histrionic tinged with anti-technology sentiments that would have done the Luddite and Agrarian movements proud. Lane wafts it with Whitmanesque exuberances.”

--Southern Seen by Larry McGehee (Syndicated in 103 Southern newspapers)

“Against Information and Other Poems represents not only a stylistic but a philosophical evolution for John Lane”

--House Organ (Ohio), reviewed by David Starkey

“Imagine a cross between Walt Whitman and comedian George Carlin and you’re getting close to John Lane’s poetry in his new book Against Information. This book is part rant and part language romp and is seriously funny in its tacking of unlikely poetic subjects such as cellular phones and the national health care plan... These poems rail like an evangelist, and they aren’t afraid to take up a diamondback or two to show what a little old-fashioned gospel can do.”

--The Charlotte Observer

“John Lane’s “Against Information” rises in a long line of literary works that doubt the goodness of progress, of technology, of uniformity. Lane’s ode to a more spontaneous and direct life is a wailing laugh, disheartened and excited, disturbed and hopeful.”

--The Billings Gazette (Billings, Montana)

***

Weed Time: Essays from the Edge of a Country Yard (Charlotte, NC: Briarpatch Press, 1993)

“One of South Carolina's finest writers, Lane has built his reputation as a poet. In this handsome little collection, he turns to the essay form, though the poet's sensibility is still strongly evident. Lane... writes them with grace and thoughtfulness.”

--The State (Columbia, SC), review by William Starr

***

As the World Around Us Sleeps (Charlotte, NC: Briarpatch Press, 1992)

“John Lane enjoys a varied career as writer: poet, screenwriter, essayist, short story writer and editor. But the Spartanburg resident is, first and foremost, a serious writer of poetry. A new collection by Lane is reason to celebrate... a volume of poetic sensitivity and imagination that gets high marks.”

--The State (Columbia, SC)

“John Lane may be the best argument against Thomas Wolfe's edict-- "you can't go home again"-- to come along in the second half of this American century. And as one of the most visibly documented, well-traveled writers of the younger generation, Lane, against all odds, has returned home to "the real work," and is doing just fine. Just read the book. Is this the voice of someone who is lost?”

-- Greenline (Asheville, NC)

“In loss be gentle sorrow? In John Lane's poems there is room for both praise and quiet lamenting... Lane creates images both powerful and tender... He is a rising star on the literary scene, one whose work to watch for, but most of all to read.”

--The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC), reviewed by Sam Ragan

***

Quarries (Davidson, NC: Briarpatch Press, 1985)

“John Lane is a poet who knows natural things, and who watches, records and celebrates... he is a poet to watch.”

-- The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), reviewed by Ruth Moose

“Lane celebrates not only a sense of place but a unified vision of the world, wisened with what he rightly calls 'sense and bearing.'”

-- The Journal(Winston-Salem, NC), reviewed by Robert Hedin

“A rewarding and richly-textured volume of poetry, Quarries works toward a singular vision of the world in which all things--past and present, animate and inanimate-- are linked in natural unity. It is a gathering of healing songs, with poems bridging the distance between personal and cultural histories.”

--Loblolly (Wilson, NC)

“South Carolina is richer in its poetic diversity and artistry than the small size of the state would lead most people to suspect. Case in point: John Lane... In the landscape of his words, Lane is unmistakably Southern; in his reasoned expressiveness, he is universal. He is a delight to encounter, and I would have to believe he will only become better and better known.”

--The State (Columbia, SC)

“... a stringent poetic intelligence that has absorbed and rechanneled to his own use the two great streams of the American tradition-- Dickinsonian precision and quirkiness, Whitmanesque expansion. Lane accomplishes both the minute examination and the grand, inclusive gesture, a feat the more impressive one considers how few living poets attempt either.”

--Asheville Arts Journal (Asheville, NC), reviewed by David Brendan Hopes