Beauty and the Unrequited Landscape

Poetry. Whether describing a pigeon as 'the soul / of a homeless penny' and a 'smoke-filled dove, ' or 'wondering // when the Sinatra stardust will fall, ' John Goode creates a reality that sidesteps physical boundaries. If it were possible to reshape language in the manner of scordatura tuning for a stringed instrument so the note played isn't the normally expected one, these poems would be the result. The most impressive quality is the consistency with which the images register as being absolutely right as they make connections that freshen all our senses. The lines may fly high but they aren't random. Here is a poet looking hard at the world we're in and wringing out its spirit drop by disquieting drop, and all with a flair we're lucky to encounter.--David Chorlton BEAUTY AND THE UNREQUITED LANDSCAPE is a play of light and shadow throughout the depths of memory, feeling, and experience. Think layers. It isn't this or that, but this and that. It reads like the moments of the first swim in spring. You jump into the freezing cold water. There is that single, burst of overwhelm, and then, as you slip deeper down, you think, 'Damn, this is beautiful.' When you finally surface for air, your heart is full and tender, and you look up and see that, yes, 'The sky is the day water was born.' The poems in this book call us back to being bodies of spine and flesh and place us in the sacred spaces of womb, river, and forest. They also catapult us into the wonders and terrors of mind taking on the supernatural, citified, and mechanistic world of 'Machine.' When we meet John at the end of the book, 'Do we feel Machine?' No. We meet a man who already knows us. We feel inspired by his ease and authenticity and genuine love for the word. We feel a sudden nostalgia from the future for everything, and we are timeless in his presence.--Rachel Bunting