The Tenderness and the Wood

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"The "tenderness" and "wood" signify both sex and crucifixion without redemption, passion without any purpose other than itself, the harsh reality of "love" and "sex." The poems in The Tenderness and the Wood received the National Endowment in 2005; earlier versions of the same poems received Mexico's National Endowment in 2000, the ConaCulta. In 1984, his teacher at NYU, the literary critic ML. Rosenthal, wrote "Fick has sustained the visionary moment longer than any poet since Ezra Pound's 'Rock Drill Cantos.'""--