Poetry. Renewing and drawing upon a spiritual legacy in innovative poetry—an American poetic lineage that includes Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson, that continues in the writing of Robert Duncan, Ronald Johnson, John Taggart—Hank Lazer explores the possibilities for a newly articulated spiritual poetry. Jerome Rothenberg describes THE NEW SPIRIT as "something like a book-length prayer: a crisis in search of a resolution through language." Harryette Mullen writes that "Lazer returns the soul and its song to their highest aspiration."