The Black Birch - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Solonche has plenty to teach us about poetic craft, not to mention the facets of suffering and longing that inspired these poems in the first place. But these are not overwrought diatribes on the human condition. Instead, Solonche approaches us with the ease and dark humor of a Zen master wandering down from the mountain to chat for a while.

Michael Meyerhofer, author of What To Do If You're Buried Alive and Poetry Editor of Atticus Review

Solonche proves his claim, “I have a thousand arrows in the quiver of my silence.” Crafting poems straight and slant, he zeroes in on everyday events—a friend’s offhand remark, a shadow against a window, planting an iris, driving through a rainstorm—in poems which can veer suddenly, often with irony and humor, into the great questions. He loves to upend expectations, pose koan-like questions, make us laugh out loud, go “against the grain…./ For the pure spite of it.” But the great beauty of the world shines here, too—its flowers, trees, birds, insects, seasons, weather. The Black Birch even features “the only poems you will need about” a variety of topics, as when he compares tombstones to “…pieces / of The Game / put back in the box / when the game is done.” A volume quirky and delightful, with a sting and a heart.

Mary Makofske, author of World Enough, and Time

In The Black Birch, J.R. Solonche shows himself to be a man of many guises: part zen master with his pocket full of koans, and part trickster, if the trickster could be part comedian and part stenographer, and if the stenographer could be part wild animal and part venerable scribe, and if that scribe could be the kind who improves the most sacred text by doodling in the margins. The wordplay and the humor and the direct observations allow the lucky reader to see the world again, as both child and sage, though Solonche might argue that there's no difference.

Stephen Cramer, winner of the National Poetry Series for Shiva's Drum and the Louise Bogan Award for Bone Music

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