'Most of Sarna's poems are humorous and earthbound, but he can soar when he wants to.'

Lazar Sarna was born in Montreal, Canada where he currently practices law. He is the author of the poetry collections The Singsong (Canada House, 1968), Mystics on a Picnic, (Hillel, 1972) and Letters of State, (Porcupine's Quill, 1978), as well as two novels, The Man Who Lived Near Nelligan and Book Bin Baby. His poetry has appeared in the anthologies Cross Cut (Vehicule, 1982) and Jerusalem (Vehicule, 1996), and has been published in Antigonish Review, Canadian Forum, Canadian Literature, Descant, Fiddlehead, and Prism International.

Lazar Sarna's profile page

• Short-listed, A M Klein Prize

'There is a wryness to Lazar Sarna's He Claims He is The Direct Heir that is hard not to like, though it can be slippery. If Jackie Mason had become a rabbi, he might have wisecracked a line like ''You wouldn't like the beans they serve here. / I counted them for you'' (from ''I Waited For You''), and a more embittered Wallace Stevens might have announced ''No one is actually on the shore / to greet sea-crashed men, / except the shore.'' Perhaps, then, the book's title is a hint that this is something of a ventriloquist act: these poems, which occasionally adopt instructive and even prophetic overtones, are words thrown from an unknown distance by unknown parties. Wit comes in small, neat parcels (''Depending on where you stand / the firing squad is a team effort, / fresh air, rah-rah'') that will probably be too small and neat for some, but this is a book better dipped into than read straight through. It is definitely a gathering of occasional pieces, with the unevenness such a gathering almost invariably entails but, too, a good deal of rough-edged poignancy.'

Canadian Literature

'Lazar Sarna is a quite unique and distinctive voice in Canadian poetry. Tinged with a blend of Jewish humour and surrealism, the lyrics are often as impressively original as they are strikingly memorable with a cadence all their own.'

Midwest Book Review

'These standout poems are not simply highlights in a mixed-bag, however. Instead, they serve also as the accessible entry ports into Sarna's more surreal and difficult pieces. By moving back and forth between the confounding and the clear, the whimsical and the concrete, each type of poem encourages the reader to try the next. In reading through this book, I found myself intrigued by poems I would have never given a second thought to otherwise, and discovering new depths in poems I had immediately been drawn to.'

poetryreviews.ca

'In his adumbration of large themes and in the morality -- not to be confused with moralism -- of his poetry, Sarna is that rare, perhaps anachronistic, thing in an age of personal expression, cursory impressions, moral relativism, and ironic distance: a poet who wears the mantle of a prophet. That he wears it uneasily and speaks with dry humour makes his words all the more convincing. He is indeed the direct heir of something grand and important.'

Quill and Quire