Overview

"The very cool ""My Chili Recipe: An Ars Poetica"" includes an actual chili recipe as well as advice that's excellent for chili and poetry: stir occasionally. A good poem requires a kind of mixing or churning, a change (or changes) in direction, in tone or feeling, if it's to offer anything new or worthwhile, and imagination is always the source of the stir. What I find so pleasurable about Tom C. Hunley's poems is the multifaceted nature of his imagination, whether conceptual, ethical, sonic, emotional, or imagistic. I had faith in this book from the first few pages, both that the poems would have something to offer, something to say, and that I wouldn't be able to predict what that was. That's the way it is with the best cooks-they deliver the goods, but you don't know how. -Bob Hicok, Water Look Away"

Full Product Details

9781947896727

Table of Contents

Reviews

Reading Tom C. Hunley's The Loneliest Whale in the World is like talking with a best friend who is both hilarious and deeply sincere. Hunley's mind has the ability to mix together David Lee Roth, adopting a child, a surreal chili recipe, a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease, the persona of rock / paper / scissors, a son with autism, the inscription on Charles Bukowski's tombstone, aging, and skinny dipping to create a collection that makes us want to keep reading. This is Hunley's gift-to see the world through a prism where the light shines on everything. And this book is an absolute gem. -Kelli Russell Agodon, Dialogues with Rising Tides These poems are prayers, at times to God, at times to whoever might need what they offer. They are at once profound and quotidian, and the tension humming between those two poles is named compassion. It is hard-won, this compassion, yet Hunley wears it like a loose garment, which is one of the pleasures of this book. In the end these poems are a way to remind us that we are not alone, that there is a world inside this world, and it is beautiful. - Nick Flynn, low

Author Information

Tom C. Hunley is the author of Adjusting to the Lights (Rattle Chapbook Prize, 2020), What Feels Like Love: New and Selected Poems (C&R Press, 2021), and the short film You're Not Alone, from Forerunner TV. He has published in such literary journals as Atlanta Review, Crazyhorse, TriQuarterly, and Zone 3. His work has also been featured on Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, Poetry Daily, and Billy Collins' The Poetry Broadcast. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Western Kentucky University, where he has taught since 2003.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available