Joseph Somoza
Cityzen
Poems
96 pages
6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 1-888809-31-0
$12.00
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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-droppers 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 wittwitting 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.
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