The book is really two books in one. It is a “selected hits” from a long career as a self-described "poet-dissident "(long time readers of Laska will know by “dissident” he means dissidence from the poetics promoted by the American poetry establishment, as well as the politics of the American ruling class). Work in this book can be traced as far back as Laska’s membership in the Appalachian ” Soupbean” poetry collective in the late 1970s, as well as the period of his editorship of the seminal poetry left literary magazine The Unrealist ). The second book, marked by a strong ecological theme, features recent work inspired by exploration of the Eastern traditions of Zen and Taoism.

Night and Day contains the "anti-lyrics" the poet has become known for in recent years, as well as senryus, epigrams and haikus. It also contains some moving lyrics, whether addressed to his daughter Sadie or his fallen Soupbean collaborator Joseph Barrett. The last section (“the Abbot and Sativa”) is something else entirely—a series of unusual prose poems combining elements of a Greek philosophic dialogue with elements of situation comedy. Deeply serious, addressing questions of being and consciousness, spirituality and organized religion, diversity and corporate monoculture, our alienation from the natural world and the road to a new wholeness, they also manage to be some of the funniest poems Laska has written.

At a time marked by rampant exploitation of working people and desecration of the environment, poems like “Loss” and “Extrapolation” are as topical as the BP oil spill and Massey coal mine disaster. As important as it is to expose and oppose big business skullduggery, Laska in Night and Day also reminds us of an ecological”countertradition” that goes back as far as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tse’s Tao Te Ching—a countertradition that can actually help foster and sustain humankind. Unlike some recent poetry inspired by Eastern traditions, here Laska’s poetry contains some bite and retains the voice of his working class experience.

If Lao Tse was born the son of a West Virginia coal miner and was radicalized by the movements for social change in the 1960s, if he had survived the Reagan and more recent era’s big business assault on working people, and if he was writing poetry today amid the shadows of our deepening global ecological crisis, he just might have produced a book like Night and Day. I recommend it.