BOOKS

JOURNAL

ABOUT

CONTACT

God

poems by J. R. Solonche

Poet J. R. Solonche adds God to his impressive list of published poetry collections. Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J. R. Solonche is the author of thirty-six books of poetry and coauthor of another.

POETRY / General

ISBN: 978-1-962082-10-5 (print; softcover; perfect bound)

LCCN: 2024932876

Released March 5, 2024  |  Copyright 2024

104   pages

Author Biography

Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J. R. Solonche is the author of thirty-six books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

Endorsements

“J. R. Solonche can pack so much humor and linguistic playfulness into such tight bundles, it feels like 1,000 clowns issuing from a VW Bug. He can also fit a lot of darkness and mortality into them, which feels more like 1,000 clowns dressed like Marilyn Manson issuing from a VW Bug. Solonche can be crass the way only the truthful can be, mischievous as a child with his hands in the honey jar, or even aphoristic and proverbial like a modern day Martial. Though you never know which Solonche you’re going to encounter on the next page, he’s a great bunch of guys to get to know.”
—Stephen Cramer is winner of the Louise Bogan Award and the National Poetry Series.

“In a style that favors brevity and pith, J. R. Solonche brings a richness of experience, observation, and wit into his poems. Here is the world! they exclaim. And here and here and here! Watched over by ancient lyric gods—Time, Death, and Desire—we find the quotidian here transformed.”
—Christopher Nelson is editor of Green Linden Press.

“These short poems are an extraordinary amalgam of wit, close observation, humor, and clear-seeing. Each one singles out and illuminates an ordinary moment—ordinary, that is, until the poet explodes into a miniature epiphany. Easy of access and frequently profound, J. R. Solonche’s poems induce in me a state of delighted surprise.”
—Chase Twichell is author of Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems.

“The history of book blurbs is littered with high falutin’ praise, whacky and wild metaphors, written to impress not to inform. All I need to say about J. R. Solonche’s poems is that they are good, really, really good. So much so that they have a high “I-wish-I’d-written-that” factor. That’s a compliment I hand out to very few poets writing today. You want wit? You want humor? You want erudition? You want them all mixed into poems? Try Solonche. You won’t be disappointed. Envious perhaps, but not disappointed.”
­—John Murphy is editor of The Lake Contemporary Poetry Webzine.

“Sample one by one these epigrammatic, epiphenomenal, Epicurean episodes as if they were puffs from a tower of pastry. Savor the zest of lemon, the pinch of sea salt, the dollop of crème fraiche, and the absence of any more sugar than necessary to ease the ingestion of truth. A feast for fanatics of language and lovers of pith. I’m not sure what pith is, but I know it when I see it.”
—Sarah White is author most recently of Iridescent Guest.

“The poems of J. R. Solonche catch the reader off-guard in playful profundity. While always mindful of the tradition of poetry masquerading as direct statement (the like of W. C. Williams, Robert Bly, Robert Creeley, and Charles Bukowski), J. R. Solonche nevertheless ‘makes it new’ through his masterful use of understatement, aphorism, word play and anaphora—raising poem after thoughtful poem from the familiar and often overlooked ‘little things’ of the poet’s day-to-day encounter with the world.”
—Phillip Sterling is author most recently of And Then Snow.

“The best feature of Solonche’s poetry is its diversity. Everyone who encounters this volume (including the postman who delivers it to you) will find something in it to understand and remember—and a great deal to enjoy.”
—Tony Beyer is author of Anchor Stone, finalist for the New Zealand Book Award.

“Solonche, an accomplished poet, employs various forms in this compilation, including haiku, prose poem, and free verse. The poems often imaginatively enter into the natural or material world via anthropomorphic similes . . . Many works have an aphoristic quality that recall Zen koans, and they can be playfully amusing or even silly . . . A strong set of sympathetic but never sentimental observations.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Articles and Reviews

“Existing admirers of [Solonche's] work can rest assured that God is quintessential Solonche, and for this reason the collection also offers a representative starting point for those readers who have yet to avail themselves of the Solonche experience.”
David Mark Williams, Review, The Lake (June 2024)