Synopsis "Escape from the Orchard of Wheels (in English)"
Crittenden's vivid imagery and bright language bring life to his poetry, which dissects the complexities of the natural world with its own brand of beauty. Crittenden's words are magic, instilling grace into the most trivial of details. In "Bay Glide," he writes: "crystalline vee/lengthening, /aquamarine/crowned by elder. (...) a cynosure/brave and/ineffable, unique/and majestic, /yet small." His characters are simultaneously small and large, transforming across the page even as they deal with their own sense of loneliness, lack of identity, and loss: "though his eyes were planets she felt no gravity, /wasn't falling toward the surface of his soul, /shedding layers of herself from the heat," he muses in "Cassandra." A prolific writer and philosopher with a prodigious interest in both the natural and the spiritual worlds, Crittenden has published over 800 poems, several chapbooks, a full-length collection titled Jugularity, and several short stories.
