Deerbrook Editions

When his daughter poses a most difficult question, the father in one of the poems in "A Beautiful Day", responds, “I’ll have to get it right. / I’ll have to clear my throat, sigh as wise people / sigh before I say . . .” Solonche the poet, like Solonche the father, neither sidesteps the crucial questions of the day, nor pretends to have the perfect answers. He sighs and crafts his way with words of care, of wit, of artistry. —James Penha

Four-time Pushcart Prize nominee as well as Best of the Net nominee, J.R. Solonche has been publishing poetry in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. Among the 300 or so print and on-line publications in which his work has appeared are The American Scholar, The New Criterion, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Poetry Northwest, The Progressive, The North American Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Rattle, Barrow Street, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Atlanta Review, Salmagundi, Yankee Magazine, The Literary Review, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, Fugue, the Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Robert Frost, Mixed Voices: Contemporary Poems about Music, Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming, Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology, and A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford. Professor Emeritus of English at the State University of New York- Orange County, he is coauthor (with his wife Joan I. Siegel) of Peach Girl:Poems for a Chinese Daughter.