My First Blurb!

The wonderful and talented and good friend of mine, Jeannine Hall Gailey wrote me a blurb for my soon-to-be published poetry collection, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room.

Jeannine is one of my favorite reviewers because she is such a thoughtful and critical thinker when it comes to poetry, so I should not be surprised that she completely nailed the underlying themes of my book and what I was trying to do in her blurb. I am so thankful for the fastest turn-around ever on a blurb. Thank you, J9!

Here it is:

Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room is a bright, funny, touching meditation on loss, love, and the power of words. Agodon's genius is in the interweaving of God and Vodka, bees and bras, astronomy and astrology, quotes from Einstein and Emily Dickinson, a world in which gossip rags in checkout lines and Neruda hum in the writer's mind with equal intensity. Self-help mantras resurface throughout as a reminder of the ways modern society chooses to deal with today's tragedies, a reminder that a cup of tea and a positive attitude are not always enough when struggling with life's bigger problems. Part of the book deals with the speaker's ambivalence towards marriage and religion, part with the death of the speaker's father, and part with the same themes that Emily Dickinson dwelled on: the natural world and its mysteries and ability to serve as a spiritual guide. This is a book that will linger in your mind with its humor, its honesty and insight, and its fervent belief in poetry and play.

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Author of Becoming the Villainess