After Midnight

Joseph Bobrow’s poems are prayers for safe haven. They are sutras for life, for the  protection of soldiers, children, mothers, fathers, everyone. We can take refuge in our relationships with one another, and in the beauty of the world. —Maxine Hong Kingston, author, activist, and the recipient of the National Medal of Art from President Barack Obama.

Joseph Bobrow’s poems know that every day we are dying and that every one of those dying days we are also fully alive. He writes that “memory and inclination are subject to conditions on the ground,” and so they are in these moving poems which are the gift of seeing and of the ability to respond to tragedy and delight in equal measure while weaving them into the fabric of a life fully realized. —Dan Gerber, Author of Sailing through Cassiopeia, 2013 Book of the Year Award in Poetry from The Society of Midland Authors.

 

Joseph Bobrow’s poems are down-to-earth meditations on the poignant mysteries of life, love, and loss. Not one is abstract or philosophical; every one is a Dharma talk with heart. I kept touching into moments of Bobrow’s experience that mirrored—and enriched—my own. Bows! —David Richo, author of You Are Not What You Think: The Egoless Path to Self-Esteem and Generous Love.

 

Reading Joe Bobrow’s poetry makes me want to live more wildly, more fully. His poems live in an irresistible arc between the raw and vivid details of his precious life and a sense of vastness, of spaciousness, of universality. I want to return to these poems again and again. His voice makes me want to reply with my own poetry, and to touch his voice in the darkness. —Stephen Cope, best-selling author of The Great Work of Your Life and Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

 

In the dense moments of Bobrow's writing Intensity hovers, swells.  Pain and bliss rise, fall, rise again. Which will it be moment to moment? Where can we go when it is happening? Seek refuge in a poem? These poems accost us with more of how it feels to be alive. Be ready. —Michael Eigen, Author of Under the Totem: In Search of a Path