Jerry Hoffman

The Quality of Light in Alabama Jerry Hoffman

These poems have been wrung through a random number generator, but alas! to no avail. For has not our American Buddha taught us that even "[a] great disorder is an order"? In this volume, you will find

* love-songs-tempered-with-judgment to the author's adopted state
* expressions of affirmation and doubt
* love poems to the author's lifetime one-and-only from the time she was nineteen right up to the present
* several Christmas poems, including a new take on The Night Before Christmas
* modest tributes to some of the "real" poets who have sustained him
* poems composed entirely of words of one syllable (watch for them!)
* some metaphors turned upside down
* nonsense pieces just for the fun of it
* philosophical essays and political rants
* sample cries of anguish or despair that might resonate with your experience
* sample expressions of delight, high spirits, or rhapsody that might resonate with your experience
* a randomly dispersed collection of minisonnets
* memories-tempered-by-distance of the author's native state
* "hide-the-ball" pieces in futile emulation of (and occasionally in parody of) one style of presently fashionable big-time poetry
* pieces that poke gentle fun at time-weary literary clichés, even a piece that rhymes moon and June, a piece launched from the notorious dark and stormy night, and a piece begging poetry critics to lay off the tired and meaningless appellation, a new voice.

Some of these poems have been rejected by the "best" poetry journals in the country, including The Black Warrior Review. I like them anyway. I hope you will, too. At least, some of them! Some have appeared in The Sampler, an organ of the Alabama State Poetry Society. One appeared long ago in The Prairie Schooner. Unless you are as obsessive-compulsive as I am, you will not plough through this book from cover to cover. You will browse through it as you would through an antique mall, a flea market, or a garage sale, courting the excitement of surprises---or bargains even.