The Dreams of the Gods
- 102 Seiten
- 4 Lesestunden






In Coming To, brevity is the soul of J.R. Solonche's wit.
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 These poems catch the reader off-guard in playful profundity. While always mindful of the tradition of poetry masquerading as direct statement (the likes 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 insightful poem from the familiar and often overlooked "little things" of the poet's day-to-day encounter with the world. -Phillip Sterling The tone is established from the outset: wry, wise, sardonic and playful, drawing the reader irresistibly in. Solonche is revealed as a philosopher in the mould of Wittgenstein: aphoristic, charismatic, acerbic and oddly mystical. If you met this book in a bar, you would definitely want to take it home with you and every day thereafter congratulate yourself on how lucky you've been. But that is true of all his books. -David Mark Williams
Although J.R. Solonche started placing poems in magazine, journals, and anthologies in the early 70s, his first book of poetry, Peach Poems for a Chinese Daughter , co-written with his wife, did not appear until 2002 and his own first collection, Beautiful Day , not until 2015. Just this March, Years Later, his twenty-second book, was published. That's a lot of books, too many for most readers to buy. But they don't have to. They can buy just one. It's his twenty-third. Selected 2002 - 2021 is a generous offering of his favorite poems from most of those books, including the two nominated for the Pulitzer Prize , Invisible (2017) and Piano Music (2020) and the 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Book, The Porch Poems. In her introduction to Selected 2002-2021 , Grace Cavalieri says, "The absolute best remark I can make about this book is that I would give it to non-readers of poems as a conversion to poetry, for its language is as available as rain; hopeful as sunshine; and fresh as the wind. It's a perfect book to let the reading public know that this is America's poetry. This is a serious book disguised as playfulness, and we are its lucky recipients."J.R. Solonche has published poetry in more than 400 magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s.
Solonche is productive and prolific, but that doesn't water down his poetry... He can compress a philosophical treatise into three lines... His epigrammatic tidy poems are philosophic gems. Solonche sees humor and encapsulates it; he frames a thought in perfect verse... He's playful and profound - the more he writes, the more he seems to know. Beneath the Solonche simplicity are significant social comments, and his goodwill reinforces the best in us.
The Moon Is the Capital of the World, the new poetry collection by J.R. Solonche, presents him at his best. His wit, his insights, his playfulness, his craft, his profundity, and yes, at times his silliness, are all here on full display to the delight of the reader, whether that reader be new to the Solonche world or one returning for more.
These short poems are an extraordinary amalgam of wit, close observation, humor, and clear-seeing.