Click Here To Purchase Whispers: Poems  

Author:  Jonathan Russell

ISBN: 13: 978-1-931807-70-8

Jonathan Russell is a highly valued member of the literary community and holds an Honorary doctorate of Literature from the London Institute for Applied Research (London 1993) and a Docteur des Lettres, Psychologie et Litterature, Academie Des Sciences Humaines Universelles (Paris, 1993). In 1995 he was chosen as “International Literary Man of the Year for Services to Poetry” by the International Biographical Center for Cambridge.

Poems from his collection won the grand prize in the 1998 & 1999 American Poetry Association competitions and Whispers is presently being considered for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

Whispers is a mesmerizing collection of poetry with vivid lyrics in which Russell grapples with such profound themes as existence, love and death. And his venues are wide and varied touching on topics from philosophy, love and romance to art and music and mythology. He demonstrates his vast knowledge with a cutting edge and a prickly sense of humor. Some of his poems are weighty while others tickle our funny bones.

As a poet, novelist, academic, and composer, Russell offers readers a distinctive perspective, and even though he is legally blind, he nonetheless “sees,” perhaps, with more lucidity than those with sight.

The poems are written in free verse where the discrepancies and variations of meter are center stage. His cadenced verse is based on rhythmical phrases that are more irregular than those of traditional poetic meter as he follows a looser pattern than would be expected in formal verse. He does away with the structuring devices of regular meter and rhyme schemes while other elements of expression, such as diction and syntax are still prominent.

As Ezra Pound described it so aptly: “regarding rhythm: it is to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.”

With just a few chosen words, Russell describes life’s absurdities with biting drollness as with the following:

“Equal under the Moon”:

“… For each gorging glutton for mutton,

millions without rice for a skeleton….

… For every arm waving a banner,

another throwing a bomb…”

The “Beef and Pasta of Art” poem is a searing caustic attack on art history, as he takes off his gloves in describing the fallacies and deceptions that saturate the art world.

“… and waffles of color trickling like treacle to tempt as the

gourmet

appetizers of meretricious modernist initiate adulation,

masquerading as Art’ appointed gifted connoisseurs,

while never ran color but in avalanches and rushing

rivers

depositing their overflowing silt and sewage onto canvass…”

and continuing about Picasso’s fame:

“Behold the budding balding Pablo Picasso,

matador tycoon of “Oxo” cube art,

and crafty craft, visualizing prosperity in controversy

… so nobody knows what the genius is driving at,

but bound to be “discovered” as the new bone to lick

by some name-making critic – a trick of the trade!”

His musings about old age are down right very sad as you can witness in

Autumn Twilight. 

Valhalha Hill is a longer and very touching poem about losing man’s most trusted friend, his dog. 

His love poems are  romantic with “Love in Winter is Summer in disguise”.

Whispers is definitely a book to savor a little morsel at a time, alone or with a trusted friend or small group who appreciate free verse poetry. Moreover, a collection that would find a more pulsating voice when recited aloud.