The Novice Angler by J.M. Green

J.M. Green’s second chapbook, The Novice Angler, is really a first book.  In a mere (in number) 22 poems, Green establishes a voice most poets take years to achieve, and then only if they are honest and brave enough to try.  Green is both.  There is such abundance here!  The poems are steadfast in facing the past—a grandfather’s racism, sibling comedies, a stepfather’s love, the old barbershop, and the “wisdom” passed down from uncles.  But they are equally funny and kind, with formal interludes (haiku stanzas; a sonnet that might be one of the sweetest ever written by a father to his daughter; wild sestinas about witches and the CIA and Kim Jong-il) and a generosity and sense of humor that always expands, never contracts into a whine.  I’ve tried to think of the perspective closest to Green’s in my experience and I landed on J. F. Powers.  Like Powers, this poet is no naif in his observations.  This is not American fresh-faced optimism cleverly counterpointed against its darker edge.  These poems are much funnier than that.  They deliver poetry’s real pleasures, set in the wry music of our times.

–James Cummins, author of Still Some Cake

As a truly complete angler, J.M. Green uses barbed hooks, so even his evocative memory pieces (such as “1976” and “Sherwood Park Community Club”) catch us and sting as we go for the sensory bait. He’s also a poet who looks for unexpected angles, like an expressionist movie director.  These poems are richly detailed and rewardingly disturbing, a pleasure to be caught by.

–John Philip Drury, author of Sea Level Rising