J.R. SOLONCHE SELECTED POEMS 2002-2021

A volume offers two decades of poetry by a prolific writer.

Solonche’s poems focus on small fascinations and random objects, from a favorite corduroy jacket and writings on a bathroom wall to a found pencil and a utility pole. Nothing is too minute or insignificant for him to put into verse. Poems like “Student and Zen Master” and “I Asked the Famous Novelist” provide brief, quirky conversations between the speaker and various individuals. Nature also factors heavily in this collection; the poet portrays a family of geese in the night, frozen lakes in January, and butterflies by the river. Writing is a recurring theme as well; the speaker shares interactions with his students, struggles with writer’s block, and even apologizes to readers for his failings. Love, lust, and sex make occasional appearances, including in “Anniversary,” a poem that catalogs the titular special day, which, after many years in a relationship, turns out to be rather mundane. Another piece contemplates a couple French-kissing on a bench in Washington Square Park. Death and mortality also insert themselves in these poems; “I Want a Fireman’s Funeral” is essentially a list of must-have memorial demands. Solonche is a proficient poet. He consistently captures the magical in the mundane. In “My Daughter Says Goodnight,” he describes that rapid transition of a young child from rambunctiously active to peacefully asleep in a scene any parent will recognize: “I turn over your form / from face-down animal / to two-legged, two-armed person.” He depicts 18-wheelers that “loom up out of nowhere, then spit / their headlights and pass.” But a couple of the poems are a bit off-putting, such as “Two Old Indians,” which features a pair of Native Americans conversing about crows, and “The Feminist Poet,” which reduces the female subject to a wagging tongue and nipples “like the tips of ballpoint pens.” It’s also difficult to justify a collection this large. After 430-plus pages, some readers may wonder why certain poems, like the one in which the speaker pledges his love to the Starbucks mermaid, made the cut.

A skillful but overstuffed collection of poems.