Then Morning To pay by check please use this order form. We are pleased to take orders from retailers. Email us with details about your order or call us at 207-837-5760. Poet J. R. Solonche adds Then Morning to his impressive list of over thirty published poetry collections. “These small bites of poetic moments,” says reviewer Allan Johnston, “jump like Zen koans, haiku, truncated Blake or Dickinson passages, and pithy epitaphs. These minimalizing characteristics result in pieces that jump out at you because of their irreverent, surprisingly spiritual, and often exceedingly funny approach.” POETRY / General ISBN: 978-1-962082-36-5 (print; softcover; perfect bound) Released July 30, 2024 | Copyright 2024 120 pages |
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“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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” |
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News and Reviews The Bookish Elf, Review, Goodreads (November 19, 2024) |
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