Blurb for My Second Book, The Sound of Rain

My second book, The Sound of Rain is out of print. It isn't nearly as good as my first book, Late Alabama. Nevertheless, the book does contain some jewels, which I may eventually post here. I want to include the blurb for my second book here, because it provides insight into my poetry. Here it is:

The poems of Joel Fry explore a liminal zone between a private world of home and solitude and the public world of neighbors, family, friends, cities, streets, and politics. The private world is sometimes safe, relaxed, but more often a place of confinement—walls, restrictions, a cell—from which the poet yearns toward a stable and happy connection to the natural world of farms and woods and the human world of romance and friendship. In rich and complex images, finely tuned cadences, and a confident and steady voice, the poet renders his awareness of his inner life—the pain, the longing, the hope, the fear—and the dangerous but powerfully seductive

world outside his window. Language is both refuge and quest, and “the sound of rain” is equipoise.

Harry Moore, author of Bearing the Farm Away and Broken and Blended: Love’s Alchemy.