I have discovered a new favorite poet: Christopher Fried. My personal list of favorites is not easy to break into. It includes Howard Nemerov, Anthony Hecht, Yeats, Frost, Keats, Dickinson, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen. In Analog Synthesis, Mr. Fried has done just that over a variety of topics, and he has done it very well. In a world steeped in ambiguity and irreconcilable symbolism, Fried's poetry stands out as both accessible and filled with deeper meanings. That is not an easy task to pull off. -Harvey Stanbrough, novelist, essayist, poet, and writing instructor
Analog Synthesis continues the pattern Fried started eleven years ago and exceeds it. His formalism allows for compression, and some of his work, a good deal, seems to my mind, in a way, kin to certain poems of Hart Crane, although his subjects are different. His sentences rock and pull, like tectonic plates, and yet confirm the overall meaning with a startling clarity. These are deeply felt poems, drawn from the past with the poignant humor that love and time compel. And now I am compelled to use a famous title to describe them as what they are, Pictures From a Gone World. They seem to emanate from such a place, from an earlier life, our earlier life, the once upon a time of each of us. There is attractiveness and power in such poems. Possibly greatness. I have been entranced by them.
-E.M. Schorb, poet, novelist, and author of Once Upon Each Time: Collected Poems
It's a rare gift to step back in time and let memory illuminate the present. Nostalgia, after all, isn't just a longing for the past - it's a celebration of the inspiration that shaped who we are. In this collection, Analog Synthesis, Christopher Fried crafts verses that resonate like echoes from a mixtape, capturing the rhythms of our collective imagination and the cultural touchstones that still reverberate today...Fried's poetry does something powerful - it transforms nostalgia into art, blending reverence for the past with a keen awareness of the present.
-Robin Block, Founder and CEO of CREATORVC
