Böcker av Jack Powers

In five sets of "broken" sonnets, Jack Powers pulls readers into and through the lives, decisions, regrets and celebrations of a score of deeply human characters--himself included. From teenager Jack, who tries to "rig" the Catholic confessional system, to ancient Bob, who tends his dying Joan gently after 62 years of marriage, we watch and find ourselves rooting for Powers' people. We want his seeds to grow, his buds to blossom, his dying leaves to drift in pleasant breezes. We hear the quiet laughter hiding under the songs. Still, life is complex, and Jack Powers feels that complexity with thesensitivity of a seismometer, records it with the accuracy of a mathematician or painter, and plays it like jazz.So listen-and watch--as sonnet rules loosen, lines lengthen, images double back and become symbols, and stories echo other stories. Last Acts come first in this collection, followed by portraits of relationships which are Still Love: a stoned teen grilling burgers for his family; Alice Neel painting brutally honest self-portraits. Sonnet form runs like tangled wire through Powers' book, perhaps most noticeably in the Still Love pieces, and in the section titled Unruly Love, where form and content collaborate in unruling the expected rules. Noble Suffering poems are case studies testing philosophical notions about the value of suffering-with ... tentative results. Still, the final section of Still Love, aptly titled Surrender, ends with a memory of ayoung Jack, "floating, surrendering/ to the current, a contented speck of the quick river, white moon, black night."

Jack Powers is attuned to twists of life and language-insults refitted as endearments, families defined by their troubles, great care taken with modes of recklessness . . . . Near the start of his debut collection, he's praising the massive coronary, favoring it over the dwindling disease and dementia that took his elders. But as mortality hovers, he teases, testing wits and teasing out the good stories of lucky close calls, game grandmothers, swearing babies, and a wry mother. . . . Pretty soon, he's against the quick demise-"and the sky seemed full/ of answers, some hurtling/ like arrows into the future." --Amy HolmanIn Amy Holman's words we find the essence of Jack Powers' Everybody's Vaguely Familiar. His "twists of life and language," are like the twists of code in a strand of dna. They replicate, as much as is possible, both what we have in common and what distinguishes us. Why, this collection asks, why does everybody seem vaguely familiar? How do we relate to one another as children, as adults, as elders? Whose perspectives are most convincing--and why? How replicable/reliable are the symbols we use to code "I'm the coolest" or "Neither life nor death can frighten me"?Powers' poems, taken together, describe a full arc of living. In "Carry/Miscarry" we grieve the loss of "a not-yet being with thin veiny arms and legs and head," and in "Do Not Resuscitate," we're reminded that, though "the elderly score highest on happiness polls," it may be "just those who can answer the phone." "In Praise of Heart Attacks" morphs into "In Fear of Heart Attacks," yes, but neither is the final word. Life and language twist into a double helix of questions, which Powers' persona untangles and tangles again. In "Smokin' A Real Cool Brank," he traces a history with cigarettes from age 10 to age 29, balancing the pleasures and perils of tobacco; in "The God of Stupidity," we vicariously experience the crazy freedom of teenaged joyrides--though this poem and others also hint at something potentially destructive in that freedom.About a quarter of the poems deal with elderly dementia, though usually with a generous dose of affectionate and respectful whimsy. Take these lines from "He Couldn't Remember." "He Couldn't Remember/ why he got up, why he'd come upstairs/ . . . But then it never mattered/ what he'd been looking for anyway,/ it's what he'd found. Like this paisley-moted/ shaft of afternoon light bending/ through the dusty panes; a yellow spotlight/ like one from that thirties painter famous/ for lonely men in a night-lit diner."Everybody's Vaguely Familiar is ultimately a joyous collection. Jack Powers' voice is fully human.