“Gail Wronsky has been at it for a long time. At what? Well, poetry, for one, but even before poetry, I imagine, a surrealist drive, by which I mean keeping tabs on death as filtered through an icy, blue-lipped, Kodacolor, apocalyptic, consciousness. Even her torrential proverbs are surreal, and her confessionalism hallucinates, with its memories of music boxes shaped like French cathedrals, its erotic marigolds. “Death ferments deep in the wrinkles of certain trench coats,” she writes. It inhabits every space in these poems, the air that shrouds commas, the aperture that opens where the line breaks like a bone. Mockingbird’s Proverbs is, at its core, an act of mystic generosity. When mystics convey visions, it is holy instruction. It’s dowry, legacy. Be subversive, Wronsky’s poems tell us, while you still can. The imagination has always represented a defiance of the suburban lawn, a revolt against tyranny. Ask Lorca, a member of Wronsky’s lineage. Ask the mockingbird, with its downcast eye.”—Diane Seuss, author of Modern Poetry and frank: sonnets“‘We’re a stone’s throw from eternity,’ Gail Wronsky declares in Mockingbird’s Proverbs, her vibrant entry in the tradition of wisdom literature. “If gods do dream,” she adds, “no dream goes to waste.” And her poems offer abundant proof that dreams born of an antic imagination coupled with formal rigor and wit will not be wasted on discerning readers, especially those who may believe there is nothing new under the sun. For Wronsky has discovered how to sing ‘the anthem of the Infinite in a bargain basement.’ And what she hears at the intersection of the divine and the quotidian is music for the ages. Sing it, sister!”—Christopher Merrill, author of Flares“What an astonishing and breathtaking book this is—the brilliance of the poems’ aphoristic nonchalance and their biting wisdoms move like large uncut diamonds on a roulette wheel. There is no description for this whiplash tenderness piercing all of these poems.”—David St. John“Wronsky takes us to the existential theatres of a life lived to its fullest, or is it its emptiest? “Or maybe it’s the light/pouring in like eggnog, or the/deep eroticism of marigolds.” Only a poet who has dived into the wreck can extract wisdom with such singular West Coast wit. Family, love and memory are transformed in an “eternal spiral notebook” overflowing with grit and compassion. Mockingbird’s Proverbs are poems in conversation with our troubled age, with the revelations of time and the mysteries of death. Poignancy skirts the borders of irony, and humor is never far behind their philosophical depths. “Exuberance is Beauty,” William Blake proclaimed in his “Proverbs of Hell.” Wronsky’s poems continue that exuberance.“—Ramón García, author of The Chronicles“Gail Wronsky has always been a formidable poet, one whose craft and beauty echoes so startlingly upon the page. With this new collection, she has gifted us with so much more. There is a depth to her speakers that we’ve never seen before, a knowing that we are led into without too much fanfare. The poet in this collection is an empowered one like never before; she wields her sharpened pencil like a knife upon the page, arming the reader against the woes of life, constantly giving us permission to dwell upon the darkness without getting lost in it. After all, ‘Light needs so much dark in order to dazzle.’ With Mockingbird’s Proverbs, we are able to get a glimpse into the eternities we are surrounded by; the poet goes out of her way to bestow on us instructions she has given herself too, instructions filled with immediacy and urgency, instructions that speak only the truth, and redeem us afterwards. ‘Sit here with me, in the/ time we have, so that eternity can love us.’ And indeed, we are loved, gathered, collected in this poet’s singular eye – and given permission to set ourselves free, no matter our circumstances.”—Mahtem Shiferraw, author of Nomenclatures of Invisibility
