Joseph Somoza

 

Cityzen

Poems



96 pages


6 x 9 inches


ISBN: 1-888809-31-0


$12.00


Cityzen is a collection of contemplative poems written while sitting in the backyard, the writer having retired from the busyness of the world and, thus, with an eaves-dropper’s perspective on the noisy commerce carrying on around him, but muted by bird chirps, leaves soughing in the wind, his own reflections, and the music of the words themselves.


Images limn ideas, never give away. Ideas are also kept at bay by ironic flicks of talk, fragments of conversation, questions left asking, no explication. The ‘voice’ in these wry, seemingly casual poems recognizes (ruefully) the search for Something Meaningful, but faces it off with wit—twitting words in a perverse inclination to question its own usages.

—Madeline Tiger


Joseph Somoza was born in Spain and grew up in New Jersey, Chicago, and Cincinnati. He retired form teaching at New Mexico State University in1995. He lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico with his wife Jill, a painter.