Stand in Old Light

My immediate reverence for these poems almost startled me, reminding me of the first time I fell in love with poetry with Whitman years ago. It’s hard not to feel grateful to be alive when a simple loaf of bread is reframed as “having the sun on a cutting board.” Stand in Old Light will “hover / heart-like” with me for a long time.
~Melissa Fite Johnson, Midlife Abecedarian

Stand in Old Light reads like a personal meditation. There’s a razor-like quality to Porubsky’s voice; his line and stanza breaks hone the blade of seeing into a scalpel of knowing. As in zazen, the poet cuts away the fat of imagery to discover what he knows about wind and sun and living things, what he knows about love and family and endurance. Stand in Old Light is bright and lyrical, lean and muscled, gentle and nurturing. It is a pilgrimage pressed “forty days to one.”
~Al Ortolani, Hansel and Gretel Get the Word on the Street and Controlled Burn