Vengeful Hymns (September 2009)By Marc J. SheehanISBN: 978-0-912592-67-1Vengeful Hymns is the winner of the 2008 Richard Snyder Publication Prize Vengeful Hymns was the runner-up for the 2009-2010 Society of Midland Authors Poetry Competition. [ Buy Now! ]
“Marc Sheehan’s poems are reflective, wry, and humble. They are also quietly stubborn and assertive. The humor in these poems hurts a little with their recognition of our own foibles and pure flat-out goofiness. Sheehan celebrates the good, ordinary, imperfect life full of improvisations, going through life on hunches and goodwill. His poems would break your heart if they weren’t so warm and funny, wistful and accepting." - Jim Daniels “These are poems full of good will, humor, but also exacting detail. There's plain genius involved in the hard, appreciative vision here--a long distance from musical fountains to Druidic shrines, bench-pressing to the Vernal Equinox. Marc Sheehan's poetry opens a door, tosses us in the back seat, and gives us a tour of the undaunted, the admirable, and the startling.” - Laura Kasischke “With his hard-pressed wit, and a tone that moves from rueful to lacerating to just plain funny, Sheehan creates a likably woebegone character who can say this kind of thing: “And then, despite my best efforts, it was spring.” Loss and failure may gnaw at the speaker’s vitals, but they leave his nimble mind intact. Like a deadpan Midwestern Wordsworth, he notes: “So this, too, will be memory – disaster / recollected in tranquility.” When a poet this canny and grounded and wry comes out of the heartland, there’s good reason for us all to rejoice.” - Elton Glaser
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