The Pure Inconstancy of Grace

Written by Richard St. John, The Pure Inconstancy of Grace is a compilation of free-verse poetry distinguished by the naturally elegant patterning of words and concepts. Both mundane and spiritual topics are touched upon, in the course of bemusing life's greatest mysteries. Highly recommended. "Heidegger's Pear": Imagine a pear. First, its freckled, golden / surface, then the freckles softening / to oozy spots of brown. The pear's dissolution / not a thing that happens to a pear, but one / with its very being, with it from the first / green node upon the stem. But, unlike man, / the pear cannot imagine / what its death might mean: not just / a world without the fragrance of this one pear - gone. Not just / a world without the fizzy orchards / leafing out in spring. The possibility- / the shock - of a not-a-world-at-all, / and no one to imagine one again. / The possibility that signifies "the measureless / impossibility" of anything - the absent / dark, dark soil, from which / these fragile blossoms grow.

Rick St. Johns' poems are beautiful, they tell stories, they sound good, they make me happy, sad, curious, interested. Most of all, they read well, over and over, and reward each reading. Lyrical without being singsong, insightful and complex without being overly intellectual, these poems bring Paris, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Walden Pond - they bring place alive. They tell stories of true love - not gooey or madcap or sex-in-the-city love, but a tender 30-years-married-and-he-still- wonders-at-her kind of love. They tell of Friendship - not buddy-movie friendship, but the hardest kind, old friends who know us well, who act wrong or die. These are good poems. This is a good man. I'm going to enjoy reading this again.