Hands Collected is a mighty collection indeed, the complete texts of sixteen of Simon Perchik's earlier, now out-of-print books. It's a 593-page paperback, retailing at $30, and the definitive guide to Simon Perchik's work. Published by Permanent Saw Press, it's generated a ton of buzz. Let's start with what Poetry said about it, in the words of Donald W. Baker:

Simon Perchik's poetry is harshly urban, its tone established by violent verbs (yank, twirl, rake, cock, attack) and equivalent nouns (buzz, risk, jet, rock, clank) by means of which it purges itself of song and sentimentality. And its images are tough: "At five / the office buildings in Manhattan / grow a hollowed spine", "one young maple / screams insensibly with reds and yellows"; "July's jet fight / on top the heart". Sometimes it becomes a private poetry, a quality intensified by Mr. Perchik's omission of all titles, so that it is hard to find the centers of thought or feeling or observation it clusters around. Yet allusions to birds and flight express a gently recurrent yearning, and images of mirrors and photographs imply a search through the self, of which, perhaps, the poems are agglomerated fragments. And the forms are tight. Lines click into place, and, despite occasional obscurities, these are few serious confusions. It is a poetry hard to feel but intellectually alive ... Working close to the deeper sources of poetry, in modes reflecting individuality and technical determination, Mr. Perchik is the most original....

Or consider these comments by Edward Butscher:

Simon Perchik's extraordinary lyric talent is one of the best kept secrets in contemporary American poetry. Perchik's performances are superior to those of most contemporaries, avoiding safe closet dramas and reflexive ironies. Again and again, elemental tokens--rain and stone, pairs of signature hands--establish a mythic field for the complex interplay of memory and desire so essential to the lyric's fierce struggle against oblivion. Clever conceits and surreal leaps orchestrate very personal material into archetypal configurations that approach transcendence.

Tony Frazer had this to say about it:

Every country, every culture has its unsung masters, as indeed does every art form. Perchik is American poetry's unsung master-- a true original, a writer who follows his solitary path, ignoring the currents of fashion. Some of us --small groups of enthusiasts scattered across the globe-- have taken this work into our hearts and try to share it with a world that often does not have time for originality on this scale. I for one enjoy this poetry; I do not study it, or pore over it; I read it. And then I read it again, because with every reading it becomes obvious what a master Simon Perchik really is.

Paul Blackburn says:

Corinth, two temples stood next to one another: one to violence and one to necessity. Mr. Perchik's poems attend both temples, and are often terrifying compressions of the violence in simple daily acts. He makes dense and sometimes brutal poems with all the implicit tenderness of a full man.

Fredrick Eckman says:

Perchik's poetry is an intensely personal, high--voltage vision, formalized into poetry by compression, crisp language, and sharp nervous rhythms. Like the best poets of our age, he works directly from his own "local" -- immediate daily life. No angelic ravings, no subway visions for this man. Instead, a tough urban wit and an almost successfully--hidden gentleness.

Robert Peters says:

The flash and swirl of images in the hands of a less gifted poet would be indulgent--here they explode from a central potency: Perchik's emotional maelstrom sucks up all manner of objects. We soar and spin, secure only in the felt knowledge that he will let us down revivified, somehow more complete than we were before we entered his world.

And Naton Leslie had this to say about it:

What is always clear...is that this is a complex, lyrical vision of the commonplace. Even a meager narrative is hardly worth noticing, finally, in the midst of these exquisite imaginings. It is the constant struggle in this process which empowers his poetry, and provides tension in his lyric.