The Art of Waking

The following excerpt from a prose poem in the collection best describe Jonah Bornstein's poems. “Describe the frantic air thrashing and flicking . . . the whistles and clicks of birds and insects, the agaves and cacti . . . the granite, aggregates, shale, slate—hold them in your palm close to your face, so close that when a breeze brushes the pollens and dust from your hand into the air, they enter you through your mouth, gritty and chalky . . . the smell of sweat mixing with it all; then you will understand you are a filter. What enters is the finest stuff and it will mix with you until histories and memories form an intricate web from which nothing is lost.” — from “Prelude”

“Jonah Bornstein stands half in, half out of the world, his poems crackling with a physical tension, the way of things; his poems calling from some place so deep you reach for him, or he for you, and your clasp is hot with sorrow, joy, passion, and gratitude, that words save us again and again.” 

–Sandra Scofield, National Book Award finalist; author of seven

novels, including Beyond Deserving, Plain Seeing, and two memoirs

“What better to fill a page’s primordial emptiness than the impulse of the poet to somehow both speak of the world and be of the world?  What better than being able ‘. . . to hold the world up and to lie down / in it’?  Accomplishing such a duality is Jonah Bornstein’s work in these lyric poems. His voice conveys the longing and sadness inherent in such a two-fold being, one intent on becoming ‘. . . the twilled heart of man / and sycamore / white / as bone.’”  –Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate