J.R.Solonche’s many books of poetry, one nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, reveal a wry and vivid wit, a sharp but sympathetic eye, and a respect for the homely but significant detail, all wedded to an acute social and cultural consciousness. In his imaginative progress through city streets and country roads, the commonplace becomes the extraordinary… In lines full of mischief or romance, gaiety or grief, he is the poet of the everyday, spent on earth or in an imaginary heaven.

Judith Farr, author of What Lies Beyond: Poems and The Passion of Emily Dickinson.

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.”

— Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books

“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

“The spirit of Horace, the melancholy of time slithering away and turning all to dust, tempered with art, wit, and good grace…”

— Ricardo Nirenberg, editor of Offcourse: A Literary Journal

“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, editor of Green Linden Press

“J.R. Solonche’s poems are like translations from a language far more direct and intense than the English of everyday speech. And yet that speech is the very stuff his poems are made of. Solonche drills down to the core, the pith of the conversational moment.”

— Hilary Sideris, author of The Silent B and Un Amore Veloce