"A poet known for his narratives, like Ludlow, the acclaimed historical-novel-in-verse turned opera, David Mason curates the archipelago of intensely satisfying lyric poems in Pacific Light with the skill of a consummate storyteller." Siham Karami, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Mason is a poet defined by place, if it is Southeast Asia on the Pacific Rim or Northwest America, his poems breathe life of the people around him as well as the nature he observes and partakes in." g emil reutter, North of Oxford
With narrative clarity, . . . the poet manages to convey the tremulous geologic mystery of the whole world, and the smallness of our place within it. . . . Pacific Light is saturated with a lifetimes worth of reflection, and mature and complex in its expression.Kjerstin Kauffman, Literary Matters
Pacific Light may be a summing up, but it is also a new beginning, a book that marvels at the world while confronting loss through the lens of joy. Though individually dazzling, its poems combine to stunning effect, equalingor even surpassingthe very best in Masons superb body of work. Ned Balbo, Think Journal
The sonic pleasures of David Masons Pacific Light carried me swiftly through this stunningly crafted collection. Each poem is at its best read aloud, the accomplished rhythms emerging as a lilt and ease, a physical pleasure of the human mouth and lungs. These stories, meditations, monologues, and love songs slowly develop an expansive vision of the natural world in which the speaker is observer and participant, a brushstroke in the painting, forever in relationship to memory, to history, and to the Earth. What emerges across these poems is a full life lived in communion; what emerges across these poems is wisdom. Jason Schneiderman, author of Hold Me Tight
As a poet of Americas Pacific Northwest, David Mason has found its mirror reflection in Australias Southeast. Turned upside down by love, he has learned to walk upright under the Southern Cross. Generously, he extends his feeling of renewal to all of us and urges us to let all discovery / teach us to love the globe, that troubled child. In Pacific Light, David Mason, one of our indispensable poets, shares his discovery of a new worldand amazingly, it turns out to be this one. Mark Jarman, author of Dailiness and The Heronry
In the last stanza of the last poem in David Masons startling and soulful new book of poems, Pacific Light, the poet writes:
The effort of a life, the wasted hour, the kind word given to a strangers child are understood as kin and disappear. Time to be grass again. Ongoing. Wild.
This stanza testifies to last things: the last journey, the last shape shifting, the last immigration in a book filled with such arrivals and departures. The formal rigor of the poemshandled with an easy and almost offhand poiseonly accentuates the sense of almost constant movement, which is at the heart of the book. This book is the story of a life's deepening and reconfiguration. As such, it both inspires and challenges the reader in ways that only poetry can do. What a pleasure to read a book of poems by a poet at the height of his powers, a poet whose life has been transformed and whose poems are the embodiment of that transformation. Jim Moore, author of Underground: New and Selected Poems
"Its not a simple book celebrating his new home; nor is it a book of nostalgia. Pacific Light encompasses the full reach of a life well lived, by any definition." Geoff Page, Australian Book Review
David Mason wrote for LARB
David Mason wrote for The Woven Table
