REVIEWS
"Krech has been a criminal defense attorney for the past many years, and these are poems written about the law, the courts and the dreams that fill them. They vary in tone between light and dark, and show Krech's mature work to possess a very special kind of brilliance."
—Le Bathyscaphe
"In Chambers is an unexpected surprise, successfully uniting the legal realm with Buddhist thought, with often poignant results."
—Prick of the Spindle
"It's interesting to see how Lawyer Krech turns everyday court business into larger, epic-religious proportioned visions. Everything emerges into a larger, more significant context than mere lawyering-around. ... Buddhism here incarnates into everyday legal America and turns it into The Eternal. A must-read!"
—Small Press Review
"The impact of Buddhism is familiar in the non-academic stream of American poetry since the fifties. It keeps rowdy company thru passing references in Ginsberg and hangs around with evergreens in Snyder. These are two among hundreds. In Krech there is a feel of a serious study and practice of Buddhism, not evident in every poem that cries Bodhisattva. The poems insinuate how Buddhist principles are carried into his legal practice."
—The Time Garden
“Law and poetry...two things one never thought would be seen together now are in a delightful combination in Richard Krech's In Chambers: The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender's Office. A charming blend of excellent lyrical poetry and a touch of legal philosophy, promoting the rights, freedom, and dignity of everyone whether they be on the defense or the plaintiff. In Chambers: The Bodhisattva of the Public Defender's Office is a highly recommended to poetry collections who seek a little something different for a change.”
—Midwest Book Review
“To think of an attorney as a person who is forgoing their own happiness to fight for the happiness and freedom of others is, for me at least, a marvelous revelation. The poems in this collection paint that exact picture, it is a battle but there is a constant hope that justice will outweigh evil, and that the truth of fact and evidence will serve its purpose.”
—What to Wear During an Orange Alert?
“Krech distilled the clinical legal process into pure human concentrate.”
—PerformerMag.com
BLURBS
"Richard combines the poet’s ability to observe and describe important human events; he applies his gifts to amplify understanding about the world of justice, injustice, incarceration, and freedom. Everyone will enjoy this book.”
—Cristina C. Arguedas, Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and former president of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice
“Lawyers and poetry are not often considered in the same sentence, let alone with reference to the same person. But Richard Krech is a lawyer with a big heart and a poet with big ears and skilled tongue. Anything he writes in verse is well worth examining and you would also do well to have him on your case should trouble arise.”
—John Sinclair, author of Fattening Frogs For Snakes and program director of Radio Free Amsterdam
“Richard Krech has always utilized the power of poetry as a provocation towards injustice, from the necessary counter-culture introduction of eastern philosophy to the bewildered mass mind of America in the 60s to his positive vibration thought-poems of today. In Chambers is a significant chapter in this great American poet’s service to our community with lines in honor to the fine idea of true love and respect.”
—Thurston Moore, member of Sonic Youth and editor of Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal
“In Richard Krech’s In Chambers we find a poet who knows the realms of law and Buddhism. The knowledge of these two worlds produces unexpected surprises and a redemption of whatever image you may have had about legal verse.”
—James R. Elkins, editor of Legal Studies Forum and Professor of Law at the College of Law, West Virginia University
OTHER
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